Written piece
THREADING THE ARCHIPELAGO
Mac Donald Dixon
Saint Lucia
About this piece
A poem on the former British Caribbean and attempts at unity that remains a work in progress after many generations. However a common heritage and common tongue still bind us together with the former mother country and other member states of the commonwealth.
THREADING THE ARCHIPELAGO
Ten master builders plumb; fishing line and sinker
threading a bridge to girdle the ocean’s blue girth
from Trinidad to Jamaica. Prepping boulder
on boulder ready for the sea-floor tile by tile.
They shape the stones, each one to its distinctive worth:
Tobago, Grenada, the Saints, in single file.
They leap to Barbados, as a rainbow scrambles
up the arc of this archipelago to curve
embracing Dominica in a squall. Drizzles
encourage river swells; it rains throughout the year,
hazing towns with muddied clogs, setting sea birds nerves
on edge, northward, the Leewards, Antigua, they veer.
Cruising past the Virgins, Anegada’s passage,
its dark anemone embraces everything.
In its deep blue vault grey barnacles leverage
wood rot, the galleon’s crusted oak entombed in gold.
Under pressure, polyps thread their beads whitening
like bedsheets on laundry lines weaving island mould.
They merge with sea and foam into a horizon:
The Bahamas flutter between swirls, claiming shares
In this archipelago that time spat upon.
Nearing the Keys, suddenly, the master builders
turn south, skipping through sepulchres of blackened wares—
graffiti drawings by black sea urchins, scrawlers
on single line sheets stretching from Andros to Turks
and Caicos. On small rocks, the asterisk of doom
like a splintered flourish, embellishes the works.
Cuba’s outstretched thumb, a finger jabbing wand, points
to the Caymans, Jamaica ignites with a boom.
It has been many bleak leap years since the last joints
were sealed, the last stone laid, yet hoping to complete
the bridge to bind us under that one native sun.
A quarrel about mistakes on the master sheet
broke out between boss builder and other elites:
Heat from talk and more talk melt stones, anger flared. Gone
were the dreams along with fevers, only the cheats
with padded payrolls dared to remain with the lore
that powdered like ash and fell to the ocean floor.
Soon, the bridge and its master builders were no more.