DREAM WEAVERS, A Pamphlet of Poems and Photographs by Althea Romeo Mark, published by Triplov Literary Journal, Portugal.
I am delighted to share a pamphlet of my poems and photographs published by Triplov Literary Journal, Portugal. The editor is Estela Guedes. The work of other writers is also available to read.
https://triplov.pt/panphlet-of-poems-and-photos/
https://triplov.pt/panphlet-of-poems-and-photos/
I am sharing the published poems and photos below for those who have difficulty accessing the journal's page above.
SACRED SPACES
What the River Steals
I do not speak of bodies
stolen by the river gods,
snagged from swirling vortexes,
grabbed from capsized boats,
or trapped in quick sand.
Nor do I speak of branches
bits of broken bridges, driftwood,
household furnishings, plastics bottles,
the odds and ends, collected after flood.
I speak of things we see but cannot hold,
things reflected by nature’s spectrum of
color,
playthings of the gods of sky and water.
The river is a thieving magician
that steals the blues, oranges,
yellows of the heavens,
the rainbows of the sky,
swipes the green of grass and trees,
the white and grey of stones,
the brown of riverbanks,
the yellow, red, purple, pink of flowers.
Then in its swirling, rippling magical
mirror,
it shares, not a replication,
but its interpretation of what it has run
off with.
It makes an abstraction that snares our
eyes.
We look on in wonder, bedazzled,
enchanted by the river’s stolen beauty.
My Sacred Space/Place
The rivers walk with me,
I walk with the rivers.
We are side by side in this sacred space.
My face reveals all.
The rivers read my fears,
listen to my troubled heart.
The flowing words of river-speak,
is a gurgling language I understand.
The trees along their path
whisper in their whooshing, swishing
voices,
“relax, release.”
Seagulls flying around me
shriek their encouragement.
Watching ducks and swans in the lolling
tide
releases the tension imprisoning my
shoulders.
The rivers tell me
I
am in the arms of the universe
when I walk this path.
We come from the same place they say.
The rivers walk with me,
I walk with the rivers.
Our Story in Brief Seasons
On a yellow afternoon,
flowers, a more diverse species than
humans,
display their patterned canvases—
designed with circles, squares, dots,
spots, stripes,
shaped and stained, tie-dyed and
sun-bleached.
They adorn our world,
wave in the warm spring wind as I walk
pass.
I admire their calling beauty, pluck a
few.
They will stand tall for a few days or a week,
depending on their specie,
then slowly bend to the call of death.
The wind will whip, conspire with the sun
to blow its hot, drying breath upon them.
Rain will pound and pelt.
Drumming downpours will leave flowers
drooping,
the earth, ready to welcome their fall.
How brilliant are these rainbow beauties
that impress and stir us
during their brief moment on earth.
Flowers, a microcosm of our own journey,
show our fragility in place and time,
tell our story in brief seasons.
The Atlantic Calls
I look over a sea
of brick-red roofs of Lisbon
to the chameleon-blue
Atlantic
and wonder at the
mystery of its depth.
I see the quiet of
its moving moonlit surface,
hear the whisper of
its frothy waves calling.
They connect me to
my Caribbean home.
The Atlantic
cradles our islands
born out of the
fiery love
of sea gods and
goddesses
the keepers of millennium of secrets,
the keepers of
bones
of our captured
West African ancestors,
the bones of
slavers, and adventurers,
scattered on the
Atlantic’s seabed.
And so too, in the
Atlantic realm,
are the skeletons
of shipwrecks,
the craters of
coughing volcanoes,
the crumbling
mountains of earthquakes,
all settling into
the stories of oceans, and earth.
The mystery of the
Atlantic
goes back in time,
their depth
guarding
secrets of the
universe.
For in the
beginning
there was only
water
and from red-roofed
Lisbon,
I hear the water
spirit calling.
Dream Weavers
Women of my blood
are dream weavers.
Webs stretch skyward,
each thread spins hope,
each thread spun from
faith strong as steel.
Heads in the clouds,
we weather the huffs and puffs
of naysayers ready to blow
visions down.
Frayed and fragile after battle
we fashion fantasy
into real and fertile
futures.
We will not break the code
of forerunners whose gossamers
reach across time
netting and bearing
the promise of generations.
The Wick Never Goes Out
We said her wick went out at 95.
She planted nutmeg, cinnamon, and
cocoa.
passion fruit, bananas, and mangoes.
She harvested and sold the fruit of
her labor
on the Isle of Spice, Grenada.
She gave birth to four sons and daughters,
who grew up among her "earth
children."
They were fed on what she grew and reaped.
They were nurtured on her love
and her passion for the land.
Their
offspring carry her light
and her love of the soil.
The wick never goes out.
The
Spilling
Unburdening
her story
was
a lifting of brimmed buckets of stones—
Uncle
playing the love game late at night.
Her
Barbie dolls looking on.
Ken
not being a superhero.
Her
words drip slowly in thick drops.
The
well in which they were buried,
so
deep, it seemed an endless pulling up.
The
temptation to keep festering, scarring secrets,
submerged
in her darkest depths,
would
have been a drowning.
In the Hands of Destiny
From where I sit on a
balcony
my grandson and I listen
to the river flow.
The babbling is almost
drowned out
by the drilling, clanking sounds
of an old building being torn down.
A remnant of my past is
being demolished
to make way for a cement structure in our future.
Buses and cars, filled with passengers, whiz by,
rushing to their destinations, sprinting to keep appointments,
speeding to future events.
Like my toddler
companion,
I do not know where the
future will lead.
The path we take is determined by circumstance,
our beginnings and endings already
in the hands of Destiny.
Dustination
(We March From Dust to
Dust)
There is
rumbling in the air
though there is
no threatening volcano.
There is a
daily spewing of ashy anger,
and living is
hazardous.
Grey and brown
are
the colors of
gloom we live with.
Dust veils our
crushed city.
The clouds
float in it.
It blots out
the sun.
Dust is the
umbrella we walk under.
It is not the
Harmattan
browning and
greying our sky,
roofs, clothes,
hair, hands and feet.
It is not
Mother Nature venting.
We can’t blame
Her
for the
crushing of our homeland.
Our
annihilation is carried out
by religious
fanatics who believe in
Biblical fairy
tales and fables.
Their faith
rooted in the belief they are chosen,
and they must
manifest their destiny.
They see
themselves as soldiers in God’s army
and must carry
out orders
to annihilate
those deemed their enemy.
And ash is
fresh, always floating,
because God’s
“anointed” are bombarding buildings,
the land, the
living, everything past and present.
Is it death to
all as they fulfill their call?
Death becomes
us?
We defy death
in daily living
though our
numbers are diminished.
From this
smothering dust and rubble we shall rise.
What We Treasure
I.
The rebels were on the
outskirts of the city,
their eyes red with rage,
hearts pumping with
vengeance,
ready to slash, to cut down
to size
and bury perceived enemies.
Gripped in the fists of
fear,
we did not think of
property
or bank accounts.
It was our lives we
treasured.
II.
We are brown grass ready to
be watered,
ready to be green again
after fearful flight.
Our new life welcomes the
slow dripping
that becomes a drizzling.
Then comes the patient
rooting in a new place.
We blossom quietly in our
spring.
It is our lives we
treasure.
The End, The Beginning
While they are driven to the airport
to fly to a new island home,
the young girls look back
at the swiftly disappearing village.
The way of life that had formed them
flash past—the tiny village, a dry, dusty
landscape,
the small houses surrounded by withering
gardens,
and people sitting out front, no longer
stout,
left haggard from years of drought,
the corner rum shops loud with
domino slamming and raucous laughter
and lively lore that lit imagination.
The scenes forever locked in memory.
On landing, this new island looks brown,
too,
long not blessed by rain,
but the hilly bosoms of the terrain seem
welcoming.
At the airport, they ignore the oily smell
of jet-fuel
mixed with choking heat.
Their father stands out
among the blurring mirage of eager faces.
His arms are open, waiting to be flown
into.
It’s been a while since they saw his
narrow, tanned face,
felt the tightness, the safety of his
embrace.
Their mother, who had accompanied them,
stands like a sentinel taking in the
scene,
her face slowly relaxing, eyes welling.
Their reunion on the tarmac,
one of many families, creating new
beginnings,
resettling in a new island home.
We Watch them Come and Go
We watch them come and go,
women, and a few men.
We pass them
pulling shopping trolleys,
carrying big
plastic bags.
The charities
they have come to
on the border
between Basel and Basel Land,
operate from
a church hall and a storage facility.
Most are refugees from
wars
started by the power hungry
who never get
enough,
and see
victims as numbers in a report.
The line in which these women patiently wait will shorten.
The day of
charity will ease
their worries.
There will be a meal on the table tonight,
perhaps the next, and the day after.
As they
leave, they pause nearby
to sit on
benches and exchange goods—
pork sausages
for beef, carrots for potatoes.
We watch the
news, or read about it and feel its darkness.
Our daily
dose of deadly news sees to that.
We pray war does
not reach us.
War is never
out of mind.
We watch them
come and go
knowing it
could be us.
(c) Althea Romeo Mark
Althea Romeo-Mark, an educator and writer, was born in Antigua, West Indies, and grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Connecticut, Ohio, USA, Liberia, West Africa, London, England, and Switzerland since 1991. Althea Romeo Mark, who writes poetry, short stories and personal essays, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), and four chapbooks, On the Borders of Belonging, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Two Faces, Two Phases, Palaver, and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit.
Althea was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in 2024 for her On the Borders of
Belonging poetry
collection by Kelsay Books, published in 2023. https://www.hofferaward.com/ She was awarded The Vincent Cooper Literary Prize in 2023, for her short story,” Saving Papa Rojas from the Deathbed
Flirt.”
It goes to a Caribbean
author for exemplary writing in Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by
celebrated post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau Brathwaite to describe
vernacular language born in the Caribbean).
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