12/24/2023
I just wanted to share with you this wonderful experience from my trip in some detail. What better way than through poetry:
We Spoke
An abandoned fishing boat
Twenty meters from salty sea
Bogged down in the sand forever.
It will never bob upon the waves
Or arc and fall over the rolling surf again.
I sit in its shade; respite from the island sun,
Mesmerized by the rhythms of sea to sand.
Two muscled dogs scavenge the shore.
Partners in crime.
“Want to buy it?” a voice from the bow.
“How much?” I reply with a smirk.
“Anything,” he laughs.
He sits beside me in the shade,
His deep charcoal skin glistening in the
Cycle of sun and cool breeze.
Ratty dreads and a gentle smile
Of missing teeth; an unlit cigarette
Wedged in one of the voids.
“Canada,” he nods in approval
Having seen my Tilly hat patch.
“Don’t want anyone thinking I’m an American,”
I half jest.
“Good choice,” he chuckles.
His accent is thick and rich in its low rumble
But his words are clear to my white-bred ear.
My guard is up, waiting for the ask,
The pitch, the play.
None come other than,
“Got a flash?” indicating his unlit smoke.
I hand him my Bic with, “Keep it.”
“No, no,” he says, handing it back.
“I have a spare. I travel prepared.”
He acquiesces.
So, it began…
Two men, sitting in a relic’s shade,
Both of similar age, both of weathered skin;
One black, one white,
Sharing our stories
With each other openly and honestly.
Nothing to lose, two strangers who would
Never see each other again.
Differences? Certainly.
Two different worlds:
One of poverty, one of plenty.
We spoke of our children and of
Our love and hopes and worries for them.
We spoke of our challenges in life;
Different, yet the same.
We spoke of our searches for purpose
And how vital it is to have one.
We spoke of the humility that comes with
Our age and our time remaining.
We spoke of our dreams, unfulfilled,
Which have now transformed into our dreams
For our children; no longer for self.
We spoke of the importance of love
For those we love.
We spoke of the peace we have found
In the appreciation of what we have
And not dwelling on what we have lost or
Never attained or achieved.
We spoke of things once believed,
Now abandoned, which have brought clarity.
“Come. I want to show you…”
He gestures to the scrub at beach’s edge.
We walk… together.
“Last year, my place burned to the ground…
Sparks carried from an under-age beach fire,
Carried by the wind…
…in fifteen minutes. Everything.”
He opens a ramshackle gate…
His shanty, cobbled together from scrap plywood,
Rotting two-by-fours, rusty corrugated roofing,
Rebuilt upon the concrete slab of
What once was.
New desperate walls clinging to the
Charred remains of vertical posts.
Flags tacked to the western wall:
Jamaica, Canada, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago.
No America.
His treasures.
A small solar panel “For the radio…
For music… Not news.”
In the yard, three dogs (two from the beach)
And seven cats.
“If you show them love, they love you back.
One love,” with an ironic grin.
He stokes a smoldering fire back to life
And places a black cauldron of water upon it.
“For rice… and maybe some meat.”
From his Port Royal community.
“We look after each other.”
His meagre income: from salvaging
Beach seaweed, dried and chopped,
To sell as fertilizer.
“Don’t tell the government,” with a wink.
A fisherman who has not been upon the
Sea in months. A seized motor on his
“Good boat.”
Saving up for the repairs.
“Maybe twelve… eighteen months.”
As he pours in the rice,
“You should go… Your son.”
I had told him I was meeting my son
For dinner in Kingston.
He walks me to the gate.
“Merry Christmas,” extending his hand in love…
In fatherhood… in brotherhood… in humanity.
I took it: dry, rough, and calloused.
An hour or so of time.
A most treasured Christmas gift.
Not of differences; of similarities, of commonalities.
In a world of conflict and chaos, of polarity and greed,
Two humans, strangers, on a beach…
If the world could only sit in the sand
And speak truth to each other…
To listen. To speak,
As we spoke…
One love.
© Dave Semple – 21 December 2023
