Eleutheran Adventure

Poetry Inspired By Eleuthera ... Eleuthera means freedom.

I spent several winters on the island of Eleuthera, 100 miles long and 1-3 miles wide. One side faces the Atlantic; the other the Caribbean. I rode my bike and hitched rides, made friends in James Cistern, Hatchet Bay, Governor's Harbour and Rainbow Bay, and played on the beaches. I enjoyed a holiday from life, but wrote every day. Eleuthera is one of the places I have learned that money is less important than freedom; that kindness and friendliness outweigh most things.

Hydro Guys in Eleuthera

They seemed, with their muscled arms and grins,
their silver crosses and their baseball caps ...
(not a hard hat to be seen)
to be playing a game
that somehow married
pick-up sticks and cat's cradle
with a baseball game
played between earth and sky.

Shouting, their shirts darkened with their sweat,
they dug out a cable
and eased, tugged and shoved it
under and over itself.

Then they winched it up to the player on the pole,
the only one wearing equipment:
boots fitted with spikes,
a belt that kept him hanging there
and freed his hands
to catch the heavy connectors
tossed by the big man on the ground.

The pitcher yelled "Hey"
and then tossed it up the thirty feet
where the catcher on the pole
plucked it from the air ...
magically.

Eleutheran Palette

The Eleutheran palette is blue.
Not the grey blue of Northern Norway,
underlit in winter by pinks and mauves,
hints of the sun.

Eleutheran blue is electric,
vibrant
alive with the sun's energy.

Pure Atlantic blues.
Deep, dark, almost navy, blues,
royal blues
azure
indigo
sapphire

Near shore and over coral beds,
rich blues mingle with a touch of green
creating aquamarines and deep turquoises.

The Caribbean is a deep turquoise
greener but still of the palette.

Shifting Wind

Yesterday,
waves of horses,
white manes streaking out behind them,
reared up,
galloped toward shore,
fighting the wind,
a moving mass of blue and creamy foam.

Today the wind moves with the waves,
creating a grey-green violence
of spume and breakers.

The far shore is a ragged edge of white tatters
broken rhythmically by explosive puffs of spray
that dash against the rock and fall back into a dark sea.

Overhead the clouds mass,
grey and creamy pink against a blue dawn.
The wind is an incessant whistling in the eaves,
shrieking around doors and windows.
One white plastic chair splays itself against the west railing.
Another is upturned at the other end of the deck.

They say,
when the wind shifts,
weather's coming.

Dawn

I never see dawn at home.
I suppose the same sequences occur
whether I see them or not.

Here dawn is a developing photograph.
First shapes ...
grey, indistinct, acquiring edges,
shades of grey and black.

The squared white cement posts joined by white piping,
define the deck.

The palm below sways in the wind.
Casuarina trees wave feathery evergreen leaves against the skyline,
A white house looms on the hill.
Grey roads emerge and converge.

Dark waves break against the shore
scattering foam.

It takes awhile for the black and white landscape
to find its colours,
and become ordinary.

At dusk, the process reverses
and night sucks out first the colours ...
then the distinctive lines and shapes ...
till land and sea disappear.

Vanishing Act

Dusk licks away the rays,
Swallowing colour,
Then line,
Finally
Shape.


Dawn
shapes, defines,
Outlines, shades,
Warms with colour.
Baptizes the world with light.

Eleutheran Stand-off
a prose poem

Near Hidden Beach, in front of the broken road by the round house built on the inhospitable pocked moon surface, a twenty foot deep culvert has been drilled into the grey- black coral, to provide a return path to the sea for the waves that batter that cliff..

Eleutheran stand-off waves create within themselves ten foot turquoise caves. They roll in one after another crashing into the sea wall, spilling masses of foam into the trough to surge down to the cove beach.

The water not captured by the channel sweeps back out to sea sucking with it sand and foam to its inevitable collision with the next incoming wave.

These stand-offs take place a few feet from shore. Heroic forces meet and leap high and higher until the superior force of the incoming wave overpowers the back surge. Sandy soapscum foam spreads over the blue water surface before crashing against the sea wall. Each wave expends enough energy to ensure it will be the loser in the next clash of the Titans.

We watch, Roy and I,
sitting on a fragment of the road the ditch was built to protect,
like children, mesmerized by the exuberant skirmishes.

Warmed by the sun,
sprayed by a mist that fogs our glasses
we breathe in brine, taste salt when we lick our lips
or kiss one another.

We exclaim over the thunderous boom of the surf
the white spray that leaps high in the air as the giants collide,
the rainbows in the vapour released when they crash down into the sea.

Yesterday it occurred to me that
when we go home.
we could likely be happily entertained at a laundromat
watching front loading washing machines.

Eleutheran Blues

Eleuthera is an island
populated mainly by poor black Bahamians.

You'd expect Eleutheran blues
to be like the blues of poor blacks elsewhere.

But Eleutheran blues are happy blues.

Eleutheran blues are electric.
sky and water vibrant
against the warmth of sun drenched sand.

The sermons and the singing in Wesley Methodist
reverberate against the concrete walls ...
setting up echoes in a congregation
that is not so much depressed by poverty as relaxed by it.

Clarisse exhorts them to "stop bein' so relax',"
not so they can wail the blues,
but so they can praise God with a full heart and energy.

Warren's Fish Fry Story

Mitzi's sixteenth birthday fell on Sunday.
Warren had been up half the night before,
Catering his step-sister's birthday party.
A big celebration with loads of food and kids.

Mitzi's mom went off to church with Warren's dad,
Leaving the kids at home.
Warren, heading off to church a little later, was horrified
By what was happening across the road.

Why, it looked like a fish fry ...
There was a bumpin' and a grindin' goin' on.
Music was blarin' forth.
And on the Lord's day!

Well, he stomped right over there,
A towering mass of anger.
Told those kids to have some respect.
Made sure the music was turned off before goin' off to church himself.

All the way to church he fumed.
He'd never been allowed to skip services at sixteen.
He hadn't been allowed to play anything but sacred music on Sunday.
And dancin'? Like that? On the Lord's Day?

Well, by the time he slid into the pew beside his father and Jenny,
He'd worked up quite a head of steam.
Told his father in vehement whispers what had been goin' on.
His father shrugged. "No big deal. She's sixteen for goodness sakes."

Warren subsided into a huddle of mute anger.
Resented the unfairness of his father's stand.
He'd have been walloped by this man for such behaviour
When he was sixteen.

By the time the church service was over,
Equanimity restored,
He was able to tell this story
And laugh at himself.

It took Mitzi a little longer
To warm up to him again.
But then Mitzi just turned sixteen.
Warren's thirty something.

And to think,
I always thought a fish fry was just a barbecue.
I never knew it was an opportunity for debauchery ...
A regular Sodom and Gomorrah ...

Hidden Worlds

I used to look at clouds,
Imagine a world peopled by spirits,
Believed if I could just slip in through this opening or that,
I'd be rewarded by a glimpse of a pastel heaven.

I still like skies
But adulthood and air travel
Have demystified the heavens.
Pity.

Today I sometimes catch a glimmer
Of that long ago child
Who imagined whole worlds of possibility
In a hint of an opening.

These arcane worlds
Are quite unlike the heaven of my childish imagination.
Now I open doors into hidden human life,
And gasp with pleasure.

First a inkling of something more,
Then as the details are revealed,
Little orgasmic explosions of pure ecstasy ...
One after another.

In Damascus, in the walled city, I passed through a portal into a courtyard.
Doorways opened in every direction.
Stairways led up to still more entries.
A whole extended family
Lived around the fountain in which a watermelon cooled.

In France once, walking down a narrow dark cobbled alley,
I peeked into an open doorway,
And discovered a world of sunshine, potted plants and laundry,
Of children and chattering women.

In Eleuthera the streets seem to be straight,
Their intersections, perpendicular.
Shops and houses with yards line the routes.
Everything looks very ordinary.

But beside Pammy's dark blue restaurant in Governor's Harbour
In between Pammy's and the house next door,
The one with the faded, flaking aqua paint,
A narrow entrance to an alley beckons.

I'm always seduced by the music,
Pulled into a world of dogs and kids,
And women shelling pigeon peas in doorways,
Leading their hidden lives behind Pammy's restaurant.

Just the other day, in James Cistern,
I discovered, quite by accident,
That whole neighbourhoods exist behind the houses
Facing the Queen's Highway, looking out toward the sea.

A sign advertised a new restaurant, Alphemia's.
I walked my bike up to the big green empty-looking house.
A delivery van stopped.
Told me the restaurant was behind the green house.

I continued further in.
Found a house with a gate across the verandah opening.
Opened the gate.
The house looked deserted, cool and dim.

An old woman leaning on a crutch hobbled to the fence.
"Knock on the door," she cried.
I knocked timidly.

Blanche, the fruit seller on the Queen's Highway,
Joined the old lady.
"Knock harder!" she yelled in her hoarse voice.
I knocked again, louder this time.

A solemn little boy wearing a school uniform arrived.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Darius Pinder, ma'am," he replied.
I shook his hand and asked, "Is your mama cooking?"
"Yes ma'am," he replied. "Come on through."


He led me through the tidy house with antimacassars on the chairs
Out through the back door where half a dozen school children sat eating pizza.
They giggled when he pointed me toward the tiny restaurant.

Afterwards, back out on the Queen's Highway,
My back to the Caribbean,
I took one last look
At the world I'd discovered.

It was as if the door had been closed tight.
Only the green house faced me.
Not a single sign that behind it, living their lives, were
A lame old lady, Blanche, Alphemia, and giggling children.

The Neighbourhood Garden

In Africa, and in Eleuthera, too, communities are like the gardens.
Not planted in neat straight rows of single species,
But in patches, a few potato plants crowded in beside some okra,
A patch of tomatoes beside a clump of green beans.

They've found that the soil retains its nutrients better this way.
Not through any kind of scientific data,
Just by doing it the way it's always worked.
Seems to me that neighbourhoods work well that way too.

Have you ever gone to a banquet and been seated
At a long table set with white linen and silver?
You can only talk to three people ... stiffly and one at a time.
Not like a round table with family all around.

These mixed up neighbourhoods
With their homes crowded together, property lines blurred,
Create interlaced lives.
Where communication thrives.

That's why Blanche and the crippled lady,
The delivery man, and little Darius Pinder
All cared whether I found Miz Johnson's new restaurant.
She's family.

Party in Progress

Here on the island, Sunday church services,
Special holiday festivities like Junkanoo,
Funerals, weddings, christenings, and fund raisers
Draw people together.

At Hatchet Bay, the party was a fun fair
To raise funds for St. Catherine's Church.

A clown painted small faces
Turning the children into puppies, kittens, monkeys
In a fantasy universe.
Brilliant yellow eyelids, turquoise whiskers, bright freckles,.
An enormous beige circle around one shining brown eye,

Released, they bounded up onto the centre stage
Pirouetting to live music
Riding a silver scooter.
Tumbling off the stage onto the grass and over one another.

Later on the same cement stage,
A troupe of supple young girls
Able to isolate each muscle
Danced with the sinewy sensuality of snakes.

At the beer tent
A jolly man in a big apron dispensed beer and wine in return for tokens.
On the other side of the field,
Bright red barbecues made from halved oil drums
Produced ribs and chicken,
And ladies in stalls passed out conch fritters and peas ‘n' rice.

Everywhere games lured people with promises of prizes.
At the bingo table, an eight inch pink and silver china flamingo
Sat between two garish still life prints
Still packaged in their Dollar store cellophane.
At the lottery ticket table
Prizes ranged from a trip to Nassau to a hand mixer.

The police maintained a visible presence
But even they looked relaxed at this family gathering.

Ingredients

Chickens' feet look like tiny ghost-white human hands
With long translucent fingernails.
But Warren says they make wonderfully rich broth for souse.

I haven't even explored the other souse options:
Sheep's tongues, tripe,
Pigs' feet, knuckles and ears.

It's not easy to disregard a grouper eye staring up
From the soup broth in which it now swims.
But the fisherman on the dock scolded me for wasting the head.

A conch has to be evicted from its mother of pearl home,
Stripped of its grey covering,
Trimmed of its tough red bits,

Washed in a mixture of lime juice, salt and water,
And then battered with a tenderizing mallet..
And, after all that abuse, it looks like scraps of ragged lace.

Whelks attach themselves to rocks. Easy enough to disengage,
But then what do you do with them?
I couldn't even get them to give up their homes by boiling them.

Lobster tails are succulent broiled with garlic butter.
The divers pull the crawfish up
From condominiums they've built specially for them.

You need a machete
(And a Haitian to wield it)
To gain access to white coconut meat.

The pineapples here are tiny
And sweet
And so tender that the core melts in your mouth.

Sometimes We Make Our Own Adventures

On Sunday we packed a picnic lunch,
Headed off for JC Beach ,
(The cove beach on the Atlantic side.)

We didn't say much
After walking our bikes up the steep hill,
Just bounced along over the ruts.

Up ahead we saw a white jeep
Turn into a clearing beside the road
And head back toward the beach.

Several hundred yards later
Where the road becomes really rough
We saw the jeep again.

This time it was attached by a rope to a black truck.
Two unsmiling Bahamians stood beside the stalled truck.
A girl sat behind the wheel of the jeep.

How did she get past the truck,
Turned around, and stuck
At exactly the moment when the truck died?

We said our good mornings,
Continued on our way to the beach,
All our attention focused on keeping the bikes upright.

"She didn't look like she was from around here," I said.
"Neither did they," Roy responded.
"They sure weren't friendly, were they?"

"How did she get there?"
"What do you think was going on?
"Maybe a drug deal going down?"

We parked the bikes
Walked out to the point on the left
And opened the styrofoam cooler.


Eventually the white jeep arrived and parked in the sand.
The guy went into the water,
Threw up onto the land a large dark object.

"That's the package," I said,
And continued to eat my egg sandwich.
The couple looked out to sea .

A sailboat hung around
Well out beyond the reef.
"That's the boat," I said.

They hoisted surf boards off the jeep
and began to walk along the beach.
"They'll use the surf boards to signal the boat," I said.

I'd forgotten they'd already retrieved the package.
We finished our sandwiches
and ate the cheese-stuffed celery sticks.

We wandered around the coral outcropping
Laughing at scuttling crabs, leaping out of the way
When the waves crashed in, flooding the depressions.

We reminisced about the tidal pool in St. Quay-Portrieux
Roy remembered the woman
With the enormous breasts.

Later we walked over to the beach.
The couple had now disappeared round the other point.
We examined the package he'd tossed up on shore.

It was a large sponge.
Quite unwrapped. Perfectly natural.
I felt a twinge of disappointment.

We headed off along the beach in pursuit.
I remarked on the amount of debris from the reefs ...
Brain coral ... sea fans ... sponges.

We followed their tracks.
His feet.
Her sandals.

Clambering over the coral outcropping, we rounded the point.
Their footprints were no longer visible.
"This is where they stopped for awhile," Roy said.

"He was trying to decide whether to keep going,
Without shoes.
She likely said, ‘I told you to keep your sandals on.'"

Just past the headland, Roy pointed wordlessly to her surf board ...
The smaller white one ...
And her sandals.

We came upon the next beach
And responded to her friendly wave ...
He was out beyond the breaking surf.

We continued on our way.
I picked up a green bottle for Warren's herb-infused olive oil ...
A Benedictine bottle with a dimple in the bottom.

Classy.
French.
Warren would love it.

We reached the point of my exhaustion
And I sprawled on the sand,
My head on my hat.

We looked out at the sailboat.
"He's just beyond the reef.
Makes sense," I said

"The tide's nearly out.
The boat will come in as close as it can and throw him the package,
Wrapped in oilskin, attached to a rope.

"He'll swim out and get it, untie the rope.
They'll take off out to sea.
He'll ferry the package back on his board."

A few minutes later he caught a lift
on several successive waves
Back to shore.
The sailboat had disappeared over the horizon.
Unless I missed something,
The transfer never took place.

When we headed back, we passed them.
They were eating oranges
And throwing the peelings on the beach.

Back over the coral rock, through the deep moist sand
Until we finally reached our bikes
Leaning up against a board jammed into the dune..

We pushed them through the sand until we reached the road,
Clambered aboard, and jounced our way along
Until we arrived at the upper paved road through JC.

What an adventure!
Wait till we get home and tell them
How we almost saw a drug deal going down.

Hidden Beach Reveals Its Treasure

Roy came home today with news.
Maureen and Cathy had seen a real drug deal going down.
Right out in the open.
At Hidden Beach.

No wonder everyone laughs at the helicopters,
Black and menacing.
Noisy.
Annoyances, they deter no one.

Nobody here really cares
Unless someone is beaten to death or a baby dies.
Drug money's as good as anyone else's.
Hell, better ... there's more of it.

We often go to Hidden Beach
Seeking treasure.
Doubloons are scarce, but there are shells.
Once I found a t shirt.

Today we took our snorkels
Dove in and found a whole new world
In the deeper water
Where the fish grow bigger.

Out over the reef, colour glides.
Deep golds and violets.
A purple angel fish
Was curious enough to stare back at us.

We saw a small puffer
Hidden against the coral rock
Invisible till he unfolded wing-like fins
And fluttered away.

Then we went in at the little cove ...
Our bellies almost touched the rocky reef as we swam out.
Saw two flat bottom crawling fish.
In very impressive camouflage.

Roy put his hand on one
Not realizing it was there until it moved ...
The other was much wider ...
Kite-shaped with bulging eyes.

They looked just like the coral rock
Until they moved
and their shapes
Were defined by motion.

Here the coral is alive.
Tiny flowers wave and ripple on the rock.
I think they are flora ...
But I wonder.

This time Hidden Beach yielded real treasure.
No doubloons, shells or t shirts
No suitcase filled with drug money.
But I discovered a sense of wonder I thought I'd lost.

Marryin' Trouble

He married trouble, I tell you.
The woman shook a long black laquered fingernail at her companion
To emphasize her point.
The sun glinted off the gold designs and the rings.

Soon's she found out he liked kids
Right away she know how to git him.
Had that baby girl; then jus' a year after, the boy.
Whooie, she got him now.

That woman no helpmate at all.
And she had a good job, you know. Worked at Batelco,
Brought home a good pay cheque every two weeks
But she expec' him to pay all the bills.

The primary school not good enough for her kids, no way.
She got to have them in a private school
And he have to pay those bills too.
Some days he drive them all the way to Palmetto Point before he go to work.

Valentine's he ask me what he should get for her.
I tole him a nice bottle of perfume.
But no that not good enough.
No, she want a tennis bracelet.
.
I tole him, "Those things expensive, man. Cheapest one cost you $600.
You don't need to buy somethin' that expensive
You got all those flickin' bills to pay.
Those flickin' bills gonna kill you, man."

Did he listen? No way.
He got all those bills
But still he worried ‘cause he can't buy her
The tennis bracelet she wanted

That woman be no helpmate at all.
When he open up that store she ain't got no interest at all.
He had her working at the store
Gave her Monday's receipts for her salary.


But boy, that woman really fricked him this time.
He been off island three weeks
And she gone and close his business.
What he gonna do when he get back?

You can tell when a man help his wife,
When a woman be a help mate.
She say, "That my husband's business, and I gonna help him."
Even if all she can do is clean the place for him, she do that.

He don't have to get somebody to clean for him.
She save him that money.
He gain.
She gain.

Not this woman ... she no help to him at all.
This woman's trouble.
He married trouble, I tell you.
Boy she should have married a husband like mine!