Jittery runaway brides
sick with cold feet.
The parched sand that
slips between fingers,
cradling there alone
if only momentarily.
Fleeting in one sense,
eternal in another.
They come and go
like northerly visitors
rubbing shoulders
with caramel indigenes.
They come and go
as the mammoth
dust plumes
swallowing alive
the green
Atlantic chains.
Behold the pink poui
in golden, dry season.
A newly-crowned
Queen of Carnival
in watercolour frocks.
Swaying branches
winged in
exotic feathers.
Beneath her withering
trunk,
a giddying roulette wheel
chanced with wilted petals.
Sugar sweet, pungent.
And the August menace
that soon follows:
inert tornados
of feisty rain flies
towelling your face, arms
and legs before nightfall.
The feeling of going forth –
exhilarated, half-blind.
____________
Joel Anthony Harris is a Trinidadian poet and artist who was recently shortlisted at Into the Void's 2020 Poetry Prize. The editor and contributor to two books: The Alpha Barrier of North South Dialogue and The Twilight of America's Omnipresence. He is pursuing a double-major at McGill University.