Poems

Your Purpose

Crazy isn’t it?

How we sleep on our talents and dreams,

Because of a doubtful fear of what life could be.

Your dreams are looking at you,

Staring at you,

With anger, sadness and pain.

Instead of shunning the doubtful whispers within,

Take action reaping the benefits of the life you could live.

Your life is filled with undeniable purpose,

So why not take the first step and remained focused.

It will not be easy,

You may feel loneliness at times,

You may go through heights of adversities.

But what next to come is joy and success that will be well worth it.

So Stop Waiting,

The What Ifs,

Kill Overthinking,

Just Commit,

Absolutely Have Faith,

And your life will never be the same.

-Natasia Reid

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Our Town

The summer of 1944

Welcomed two new arrivals

At our small house

In the Greenwich Town

Community in Kingston

The one expected

The other a happy surprise,

Now three scores and ten,

My heart reminisces often

On a place that was,

That still is

But is not

And cannot be conjured

The way it was.

For Greenwich Town then,

So clear in my memory

Like stills projected on a screen

Click by in unmeasured slow-motion

One after the other,

Exists not for me alone

Exists also for natives

Of that time and place.

Sunday evening cricket matches

In Tinson Pen drew spectators

As bright patches of colours,

Some seated

Some standing

On small grassy hillsides

Topped with fruiting almond trees,

Enjoy and support a favoured team

From the pavilion set back

Officials, spectators

And some players

Watch and cheer,

Refreshing thirst-quenchers at hand

And at right, along a pebbled lane

Weeping willows as sentinels

Whisper and wait our exit.

An antiquated steam engine

Noisily speed along its iron artery,

Connecting and connecting towns

It stops each day

At East Avenue and Eighth

A choice for school and work,

Now quiet rails stretch far

From deserted station platforms.

Street criers pass by homes

Selling their goods:

Fruits and vegetables, is one cry

Solder your pots and pans, another

Fresh snapper fish, still another;

Carts dripping with water

Held Ice-chip-covered-just-caught fish

From the sea a few blocks over.

Always on a Sunday

The ice-cream man

Calls to waiting children

Eager to buy ice-cream-fudge-on-a-stick.

Twelve-inch blocks of ice

For your icebox

Saves a visit to Branstaff -

The ice factory on Foreshore Road.

Very near the ice factory,

Can be heard a fearsome noise

A loud grinding buzzing

As dangerous blades

Slice through huge logs

At the lumber yard

Called, The Saw Mill.

In the mangroves some nights

After heavy rains

Lights dot the darkened beach,

Young boys and men the invaders

Armed with flashlights

Forked-end sticks

And toting large crocus bags.

In single-minded objective

Bags are filled with crabs.

Vulnerable crustaceans

scurry around

In frantic Sideway movements

Outside rain-flooded holes,

Their hunters show no mercy.

Those images and more

Pass one by one

In my mind’s eye

Of a town as it was

In a time long ago.

- Angella Mordecai Meade

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Silvera

Silvera is a poem of pleasure plastered on the pages

Of paradise ... seventh heaven, cloud nine!

A hero of happiness, his heart still rages.

Hot from the glow of the poet’s line?

We may never know. Never know. Who knows?

But not a blade of grass in Reggae land grows

Untouched by these feet that stand everywhere.

Chairman here, committee there, Chief Judge here.

A ubiquitous euphoria of high spirits,

This animated embodiment of how we might live,

Helpful as a Blue Mountain sun that sits

In salute of sleeping stacks, still proud with a narrative

Of it’s majestic past, long before the austere Trini trend,

When Dalmain was small and still tender to touch,

This jovial poet hugged and kissed every lady as friend

His laughing eyes disguised much, much, much, so much.

Much more than a heart too big to say no!

Here let me hold your hand, let me show

No hidden secrets here, no skeleton in a clinker closet

You see what you get. What you see is really what you get.

Silvera!

- David Brizan