Seasons of Change by Geoffrey Philp

Still wheezing from the smoke of a bushfire

near a golf course in Whittier Village in St.James,

I watched flames leap over the roof of my home

and blacken the walls that guard the Ironshore

We’d prayed for rain in this dry season—

the longest in memory—to get some ease

from the heat; to return green to the mountains

and relief in the evenings with the ocean breeze.

But the wind only brings more bad news

from dying coral in Negril’s disappearing bay

up to the Cockpit  Country, where bees once danced

among mango blossoms, and now herds of lean cows

swat their tails at flies, mosquitoes carrying dengue

while they munch brown grass in a dried riverbed.

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Geoffrey Philp, a recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica, is the author of “Archipelagos,” a book of poems about climate change, which has been longlisted for the Laurel Prize. Philp’s graphic novel for children, “My Name is Marcus,” will be published later this year.