Hurricane Georges

Me wake up in the middle of the night
and me foot bottom wet. Mommy come in
with shower curtain to put over the bed.
Some of the galvanize in the roof rise up
and gone and now water leaking in.
We stop up the rest of the night, sweeping out
the water from the living room, listening to the radio
to see when the eye gon pass.
ZIZ sound fuzzy and far but I could bury my head
in Mommy neck when the thunder break too heavy.

After Hurricane Georges, everything was brown.
Me eye nearly spring long water
how the mountainside look weary and rundown
like a woman who realize she cyan breed.
The palm tree dem was bowing in prayer,
All the animals walking round like Israelites,
lost and hungry. I step outside ready
to smell new air, new day, but I nearly choke
how everything was so white and bare, open like a sore.
From the verandah steps I watch a piece of galvanize
tie round the neck of a coconut tree.

The nights stay long and sleepy,
not even the cricket dem come out to play mas no more.
We boil water to bathe in kitchen pots in the morning;
I close me eyes under cold water in the evening.
Outside still ain recover from the knockbout from the
hurricane.
Everything black and blue still. The sky just heavy and
heng down
like cow titty.
I sit a candle in every room
and me and Mommy siddown in the living room
under the kerosene, trying to make sense
out of matrices and vectors.