Songs of the Archipelagos
For Small Island, Big Song
They come from places you could easily forget,
somewhere between the Pacific and Indian
Oceans: islands where statues gaze at the horizon,
like when the … Read more
They come from places you could easily forget,
somewhere between the Pacific and Indian
Oceans: islands where statues gaze at the horizon,
like when the … Read more
1
Peel the pale, brown flesh
Hold the cracked shell to your ear:
Screams of the Banda
2
Escaping Earth’s hold,
Unmanned rockets race to claim
Living … Read more
a swirl of ravenous winds,
pummeling down at high velocities
a trinket lost in the damage
a house, a home
more than a million and a half to count
tin … Read more
This morning I’m breathing smoke
from forest fires two thousand miles away
and the people who … Read more
It’s fire time again.
So far so good.
Fog in the mornings
Erases the trees.
Shafts of sunlight
Break up the mist,
All of it, … Read more
There is an emptiness to slender trees from which the layer of leaves
They’ve shed has only begun to melt into the undergrowth
Their youth … Read more
Maybe it was in the genes Banneker inherited
from his ancestors, the Dogon, who, while the houses
of Lancaster and York ravaged the English countryside,
migrated to a southern bend … Read more
I touched you once
In a moment that came in the afternoon of a day
Almost 100,000 years ago
Your breath felt in the wind … Read more
She sings by the fire
Earthen floor swept clean
And hard-packed from years of feet
She cracks the shells and separates the meat
Years of toil have separated the woman… Read more
The satin box of hubris exploded
covering farmlands with grey ash
Truth danced outside insolent ears
suffering from selective hearing
Why arrogance has a steel … Read more
It could have been a piece of a kite
A propeller dislodged from a toy airplane
Or a frisbee – splintered by time
These piles of brightly colored festivity
That … Read more