Bookmark Jamaica-Gleaner.com
Go-Jamaica Gleaner Classifieds Discover Jamaica Youth Link Jamaica
Business Directory Go Shopping inns of jamaica Local Communities

Home
Lead Stories
News
Business
Sport
Commentary
Letters
Entertainment
Arts &Leisure
Outlook
In Focus
Social
International
Auto
The Star
E-Financial Gleaner
Overseas News
The Voice
Communities
Hospitality Jamaica
Google
Web
Jamaica- gleaner.com

Archives
1998 - Now (HTML)
1834 - Now (PDF)
Services
Find a Jamaican
Careers
Library
Power 106FM
Weather
Subscriptions
News by E-mail
Newsletter
Print Subscriptions
Interactive
Chat
Dating & Love
Free Email
Guestbook
ScreenSavers
Submit a Letter
WebCam
Weekly Poll
About Us
Advertising
Gleaner Company
Contact Us
Other News
Stabroek News

On Mornings Like These
published: Sunday | November 11, 2007

Bright sunshine awakens the island

most mornings, resplendent, yet scorching;

at dusk, it crouches behind clouds and stoops under the benches of the hills and is gone

all night, like an absent landlord,

gone to some faraway land, leaving the house

unguarded against the terrors that roam its aisles.

But on mornings like these it returns

like a resurgent sea, its waves

stifling the rocks of the shoreline and its sting

like a slavedriver's whip, falling like rain

on a day when the sun is pushed

to the edge of the world, and the land takes on

a dark persona,

the black scorch of a violent burn.

- Nicholas Alexander

Childhood

Then we were blithe, and sure as a goat

that did not know the end

of its quickening leaps, in buttery light:

the knife-hand, the red throat.

After May's grey-flecked mould, warm

life stirred in the grass.

The logwood blossoms' yellow swarm

hummed with the Sunday witnesses

murmuring prayers for the dead,

while over the tombs we children leapt

to touch home at a crypt-

the knife unseen, the goat's bleat unheard.

- Verna George

A Plain Love

I searched the corners of your space

for a hook where kindness might hang.

My wings grew weary; I collapsed

at your carved, brass gate.

A neighbour screams her valley's

wide pain, blaming anyone

at her crossing, while my suffering,

born of silence, envies her release.

When I was empty you scooped me in.

I wonder why you waited so long.

Inside, I reduced your love

from lofty rafters to grains

in the resin-filled floor; I searched your face,

but saw there only

icy reflections of my own fears.

Know, as I speak my escape:

a plain love would have sufficed.

- Sonja Harris

More Arts &Leisure



Print this Page

Letters to the Editor

Most Popular Stories





© Copyright 1997-2007 Gleaner Company Ltd.
Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Letters to the Editor | Suggestions | Add our RSS feed
Home - Jamaica Gleaner