Punctuation Marks

Where sea and land meet, begin there.
The ampersand, the join, is a fault
which caused jagged peaks to rise –
from the ocean’s floor –
spanning a vacant gulf.
On any map of the world there are footnotes
reminders of nature’s force.

Long ago, nomads, fragile as their pottery,
skimming waves, trecking from south to north,
stopped once too often for wood and water
and perished.
From the pre-ceramic Cibony
to the ceramics of Saladoid and Suazoid
we know them by their shards.
Common island caribs, sunk in a murderous tide
that flowed from east to west
bearing assassin and poets
discoverers of the New World.

Come nearer, focus on one dot of an island
I was born there, on the rim of a volcano
on the edge of a large full stop
where the sand is black
where the hills turn a gun-barrel blue
where the sea perpetually dashes at the shoreline
trying to reclaim it all.