Missing My Man

It has been six months since I saw Easy Skanking Chef. Actually, six months and four days to be specific. How do I feel about that? It's hard. Really hard. Really, really, really hard. But somehow, with the grace of God, we have managed to survive the time and the distance.

I guess, it was not surprising to us that we would find a way- we are the answers to each other's prayers. We are not perfect, we are human, and subject to the trials of humanity which will come, but we are in this together.

Jamaica Farewell

by Harry Belafonte

Down the way
Where the nights are gay
And the sun shines daily on a mountain top
I took a trip on a sailing ship
And when I reached Jamaica I made a stop

(chorus)
But I'm sad to say I'm on my way
Won't be back for many a day
My heart is down
My head is turning around
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town

Sounds of laughter everywhere
And a dancing girl swings to and fro
I must declare my heart is there
Though I've been Maine to Mexico

(chorus)
But I'm sad to say I'm on my way
Won't be back for many a day
My heart is down
My head is turning around
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town

Down at the market you can hear
Ladies cry out while on their heads they bear
Ackee rice, salt fish are nice
And the rum is fine any time a year

(chorus)
But I'm sad to say I'm on my way
Won't be back for many a day
My heart is down
My head is turning around
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town

I love my country but something has shifted inside me. I don't think I want to come back home without ESC again. I am also not feeling coming back next year as much as we planned to. I feel I need to be in a place that is bigger than me and this is not it. Am I happy to be home? I am relieved to have left the Island Behind God's Back. But even the word "home" sounds pitchy when said out loud in the context of my reality. I have no "home" here. I just 'kotch.' I gave up that freedom/responsibility when I decided to leave the country.

I haven't forgotten why I left. Many of the reasons are still here.

I don't want to come back for a at least two years- not even for a visit. I just want to be away for a while. I hope that one day my own country will again be "home" but until then, I will continue to feel like the leader of a one woman nomadic tribe- just passing through.

Derek Walcotts' Love After Love

I posted this poem first on September 14, 2007, but felt moved to re-post now. Love After Love is a most beautiful and surreal poem. Walcott is the Caribbean's own Nobel Laureate (St. Lucia).

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.