Ideas of Home

              i

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone

surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur

Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,

all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour,

mainland, where I found safe harbour under

green sea of trees now becalmed, frosted.

Ideas of Oracabessa propel me forward

down the straits of Packard, past the Jewel

Heart centre where a wild beat poet is ash

urned behind red doors. I stop and pay

respect due him. Then I’m urgent, in need

of touchdown upon ground of my being.

On haste to enter into the land of spices

discoverer within sight of gold fields.

              ii           

Ideas of home propel me up Parliament

Street; straight past the Jet Fuel café where

machines froth and foam fair-trade coffee

and writers and artists sit in window seats

to divine from flat glass screens, do I dare

go in, sit with them, and drink peach tea?