Soufrière, St. Lucia, December 2005

Under déz Pitons, the cinders sing with charcoal springs,
rocks ruddied with sulfur cascading down Diamond Falls –
the bearded men with carved baubles and beads,
You on vacation mahn, no pressure, no problem –
mahogany straddles the stilted houses in the hills,
River Doree runs cool and deadly as a snake
through narrow streets, ill pastel faded façades,
past the Church of the Assumption and central square,
childhood home of Napoleon’s Empress Josephine de Beauharnais.
The ever-windward waves never still,
catamarans usher tourists ashore as the wake exerts its will
on rows of canoes and buoys, beckons like beacons to divers,
men blowing conches over cruise ship horns,
parade tuna-colored shells around visitors,
and soté boys from the jump-up in Gros Islet dive from docks,
their dreadlocks golden as the crests of hummingbirds,
mister, madam, coin, coin! petition tourists
to throw cent, five cent, ten cent, dollar
into the deep water, shoving each other,
and one-by-one nosedive after the coins,
bodies dance upside-down, feet flit
like minnows, racing for the specie,
specks of silver sinking under the sea,
flipping end-over-end like history –
which side you on?
then surface and shout for more, raison d'état,
their voices a soca chantey, a chorus of gulls.