The Poet
“Mist and spectral peak coming and going . . . the Matterhorn from my window . . . Snow on the ledges as hedges of bougainvillea whiten and freak like Queen Anne’s Lace . . . strange contradictions . . . My craft and my craft’s thought make parallels from every object . . .We are metaphors and not ourselves . . . associations . . . in that flash when I saw Petit Piton . . . a shape that rhymed with its identical alp.”
(White Egrets #20 by Derek Walcott)
Without a thought, I purchased the hat. Blue, the size of a beach umbrella, it hid my face from the world.
When I was young, I thought that no one could see me behind the thick lenses of my glasses. A sort of opaque window where I could look out, but no one could see in.
With any luck, the oversized sunhat would protect my skin from aging, deterring the inevitable brown spots that surface like those on silky strips of briny kelp.
Humans, like all living creatures, attempt to camouflage or hide, to connect or retreat, to adapt or evolve. We shed our skin or perhaps try to slip into the skin of another.
Our joys and fears rise on the sea like flotsam during high tide, only to scatter the remnants of our journey onto the strand when the tide recedes.
And so, I floated in the sea. My hat an aquatic flower, my body newborn, weightless beneath its bloom.
Far from the loden shores of Crooked Lake, I was an off-course lily pad who found herself in the blue-green light of the Caribbean. My eyes, my hat, my bathing suit, all the color of the sea. Here the golden hour shines violet.
The water was curiously still when the other bathers left for their dinner. I could not seem to leave the bath warm sea.
Hiding beneath my hat, I watched the sea birds search for their own evening meal. Schools of fish circled my ankles, but I hardly squirmed. Still, I wondered if the grey egret might mistake me for a rather large fish.
Saltwater coated my lips and half-closed eyes. The salt-white fish continued to swim, a silver ring encircling my legs.
Piton Mountains
I looked skyward and watched the birds in silhouette against the Piton Mountains: Gros Piton and Petit Piton. I could not help but think about Achill Island’s Keem Bay. Different seas, different mountains, yet oddly similar.
The landforms rise in stunning, grass covered peaks. The birds cry and fish for their supper.
A pod of dolphins once leapt above the waters of Keem Bay a few feet from shore, beckoning me to come and play. I ran the length of the strand trying to capture their joy.
I could not dive and tumble with swift fins, but I could raise my face to the dimming sun and inhale the sea scent of salt and fish and bracing wind and watch the green mountains rise above me.
Years ago, when my mother traveled with my young family to the west of Ireland, she told me that the beaches of Saint Lucia and the strand at Keem Bay were the most beautiful stretches of sand and sea that she had ever stood upon.
I thought about our conversation while I floated in the blue sea beneath the Piton Mountains. I wondered at the curious intersection of our journeys, my mother’s and mine, in spirit and memory, separated by time.
When I told my family how Saint Lucia reminded me of Ireland, they laughed and could not see the resemblance between the warmth of the Caribbean and the chill of the grey winds that blow off the Atlantic, nor the otherworldly likeness between the bountiful coconut trees and the lonely rowan tree in an Irish field.
I could feel the likeness in the birds and the subtle shift of light. Yes, the similarities were there.
Perhaps this is why two Nobel Prize winning poets, Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney, one Saint Lucian and one Irish, became friends. They could see the truth in their native landforms and the pumping heart of their pasts.
What strikes me most is that each poet expresses the umbilical connection they have to their respective homelands.
Whereas one poet sat with his mother peeling potatoes “while the others were away at mass” in what became a sacred moment, the other heard “the cicadas . . . frantic as my mother’s feet treading the needles of approaching rain.”
Much like the intricate code of cells that create new life, Derek Walcott knew that he would one day “stitch her lines to mine now with the same machine.” Both poets carved domestic moments of motherlove into art.
Bringing seemingly disparate ideas to life in the creation of a new word, such is the power of poetry. Walcott and Heaney both observed with knowing eyes moments of sea-sun and mountain-rain, images of joy and pain that would be reborn as metaphor and message. Prophecy and truth.
I am glad that I swam in the warmth of the Caribbean and soared with the grey egrets atop the Piton Mountains. I am grateful to have discovered the words of Derek Walcott that float upon the sea and rise in fragrant clouds above bright bougainvillea.
I am happy to have had a moment’s wonder, while the seabirds circled around and around the blue of my hat, attempting to capture a silver fish, while I fished for a poem.
