Althea's Return Visit
As a child
of generations of immigrants and a victim of a civil war, I am always
fascinated by the mitigating causes of the journey immigrants make, whether,
driven by war, natural catastrophes or whether driven by the desire to improve
their economic lot.
Play Mamas
I Dreamers
Beaten down by drought and hurricane,
driven by dreams of colonial promised lands,
our mothers and fathers left us in play-mamas’ laps
when white men scoured Caribbean Iles
in search of cotton and orange-pickers,
cane cutters and construction workers.
Our parents, scattered in Panama,
Santo Domingo and Cuba,
in Georgia and Florida,
left play-mamas to hold
the fort at home while they
went off to toil in fields and on roads
to become builders of nations.
Money, salted away and remitted,
held our flesh to our bones,
but we shared the fear of marooned
Crusoe and Gulliver.
The sunshine in our own Lilliput were
the “aunties” who wrapped us
in reassuring words as they listened
to our hearts beating to suspicions
of desertion.
Play-mamas became permanent mothers,
when our parents, their dreams deflated,
refused to walk the plank of shame
and spared themselves their villages’ disdain.
(c) Althea Romeo-Mark
To be published in WomanSpeak:
A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, ed. Lynn Sweeting, 2013,
Bahamas
No comments:
Post a Comment