For Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné.1
She took a husband on the riverbank
after casting for his hearth tarot
through the coppice of his leaves.
Wayward she born,
bush delivered and sudden like
leaping moray tail slicing current.
Let no man say she never knew
what she wanted, or grew unable
to track her mate by the swells of Matelot.
She took him by the branch,
charting the progression of her sons
in his aspect of bayleaf and tamarind.
She knew him by his ease, by
the light in his forests that let in
all her several sisters:
solstice fox | pinnacle egret | the swan
who kept seasons by the shiver of wings
against the woman’s naked breast.
She knew her husband by the way all his
trees whispered, shy:
Bring me your creatures. Those you saved
from chainsaw and gravel hunger, from instrument
of collar and clamor and human want:
I have homes for them in me.
Relentless she chose, and married him with a silver leap,
claiming the residence that vetivered her wild skin,
knotting wedding rings like balata hearts in her palms.
- First published by Anomaly’s Caribbean Writers Folio, http://anmly.org/ap28/caribbean-writers-28/shivanee-ramlochan/. [↩]
