Straight Paths

To be introduced as a mountain of gray-blue beauty

at the end of that first chapter of chatty consideration—

this is the desire I carry, that moment of  being announced

followed by the brooding silence of my presence—

such an effortless presence—while I consider the old dreams

of my childhood, my regrets and the laughter over

idle things. Remember when, Aba, you and I sat at table

and ate plates and plates of yam and corned beef,

the slimy skin of the boiled yams, the pepper and onion

of the tin corned beef—that manufactured salt-sweetness

offset by the hands of a Ghanaian woman determined

to season all intrusions into her existence, to make the alien

into the local—and we ate, beyond being full, ate beyond

desire, ate, for the sheer laughter of consuming and consuming.

I have sometimes forgotten that I ate with you to be

with you, to be part of a story with you, for I knew

that yam and corned beef was your delight, the pepper,

what you would call a favorite, and the legend of our

eating like this, was my desire, something I knew

we would share, something we would keep with us

all these years, even when you were still on the bed,

dearly departed, as they say. I have always been the chatty

raconteur in the scene, collecting these legends in my head,

entering and situating myself inside the narrative while

chronicling in the orchestration of their symmetry and balance

the narrative of our being. To say this now, in the city

of our remaking, is to say that I have always longed

to be the lurking shadow beneath the water’s surface,

a universe of mystery, waiting to breach the water

and fill all watching with a certain awe and assurance—

as it can be with God, arriving in the wind or in the storm,

making this blasphemy of a metaphor something sacred.

It has been years since I have walked the pavements

of Kingston, the paths of foot-trodden dirt, scattered

stones, and broken asphalt, moving with casual assurance

that no stumbling would fall me, easily navigating

the uneven ground. These days I catch myself calculating

the undulation of broken pavements in cities lined

with trees with intrusive roots, trees seeking to break

open the staid surface of construction, trees desperate

to shake off the heavy hand of the bricklayer. I consider

each hump and sway of the roadway, filled with the knowing

that soon the blurring will lead to a dance of the uncertain,

fixated on the detail of the immediate terrain—two feet ahead,

no further, every rise a new territory to be navigated,

such labor. Let us return to the hubris of where we began:

the end of that first chapter, the narrative preparing the way

for my arrival, the wit and charm a kind of forerunner,

preparing ye the way for my arrival, clearing away the stumbling

blocks, making even the uneven paths, that my feet

planted may be assured of steady ground.