[Don’t think of boarding rituals you missed: not leaving
through the front Gate; not tasting order and civility
at Customer Check-In; the sneak peek at First Class
that’s Not For You; your first walk sideways down the aisle;
farewell families squeezing handkerchiefs; and that last mile
to the airport, the taxi speeding for takeoff on old Atkinson runways.
Scuffling to get through, at sea on subways scuttling home,
you’ll soon forget the bush paths taken, mosquito
stings, distrust and gamble. Your winged dark nights
will scout new crabways to old watchful mornings: hey, budday,
y’know where Richmond Hill is?
Not so, those Jean-Jacques & Jasons pushing off
Haiti’s shores, whose last look back snaps the boatbuilder’s sign
of the Cross. Nor brave Mamadous booked on Libya’s coastlines
for Papal portos, who startle stooped Neapolitan pensioners like crows
in the olive groves: out of nowhere, again these Moors!
showing up, bare face, bare bone! with nothing
to declare but bodies of water.
Bodies in waters crossed back when still stink
and stack the myth they show no proclivity for Olympic
swimming; though free them ashore, any shore; marvel
at marathons of endeavour, wailers of enduring light
chipping to the ends of the earth
The wonder and fear in their eyes once, up on deck!
No, count your stars & stripes, backtrackers. Check your hearts
zipped pockets for dry papers. Run. Don’t know
how lucky you are]
– W.W.
THE TRIP I WILL MAKE
is the one I am.
The skies will mirror
the clouds of my eyes,
my sinuses will
decide the weather,
mountains will rise up
when I fall, and fade
if I fail, in love.
I build my own boat,
stitch and hammer its
sails and anchor, flood
these rivers of blood
with fish that I eat.
They too are stewards and
masters of all my
deaths and of their own
fate: death’s but a shape
of exchange, the price
of forever, one
more gate and bridge: we
know the trip we will
make we’ve made before
and the trip we do
is already done.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)
TO ENTER
another town, to wear
another tongue, to hear a strange flute
and to know all their rhythm before
their speech, their song, the familiar and
the new, and not to mind that sometimes
it’s all a stony racket, a clash
of rocks the sea will make smooth, of knife-
blades which will sharpen one another
into profiles human of the moon.
(from “Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan)
AMERICA
A bright shore wakes the drowned dreamer
to his own questions: these are
what he seeks through deserts
of ribbed care or pitched by waves
of desire. To stake some cooling
pool or to be washed ashore
is not to tap the deep
well or discover a new
world but to frame an old still-life.
So the quicksand dream remains
the true rock of water,
the real continent of light.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 