The Ancient Relic at Boatswain Beach
It stands perhaps grotesque in
its antiquity.
Root bound to the ironshore,
bereft of branch or foliage.
The massive trunk sun
bleached to shades of driftwood
grey. Scarred by fires, eroding
from termite trails. Broken
pieces lying scattered in the
surrounding scrub.
This monument, to ages past, its
history unknown.
I visualize a seed ripening,
falling from its mother tree
on the banks of the mighty
swept away by the current,
always towards the ocean sea.
The seed, fertile, seeking a
place to grow, mature and
reproduce, finds its home,
but the seed, still unknown,
resides on the shore
of Grand Cayman .
By: Brenda Quin
Life
By: C.G. Wilson
A peck of seed
A grain of dust
A drop of rain
A ray of sun
A breath of air.
Life needs all these
And more
Life struggles
To survive
It does.
Too much of one
Is as bad
As too little
Life itself
An act of balance.
Where did it all start?
Will it all come apart?
Is there a God?
Why should we be good?
Is evil so bad?
Why do we make friends?
Why do we have enemies?
Why do we come and rescue persons in distress?
Why do we make war upon them?
Why do we try and blow up this world?
We use 4 letter words
Most disgust
A powerful one is HATE
But the most powerful
The most beautiful one
Is L-O-V-E.
At Miss Lassie’s House
I stand beneath a massive group
of sea grape trees.
Their gnarled and tangled growth,
survived over countless years.
Their roots, buried deep amongst
limestone rocks, and sandy soil.
Enduring nameless storms, but now
supporting young, new growth.
I look up at this magnificence of
Nature, the awe-inspiring
natural art forms –
knowing that without them,
there is no life, hope.
These we cannot create,
but nurture them we must.
The air perfumed by fallen
purple fruit. New seed will sprout,
the circle of life continues,
endlessly.
By: Brenda Quin
Colour of Love
What is the colour of love?
Is it the deep blue-black of the
ocean depths, or the dazzling bright blue
of a cloudless Caribbean sky?
Perhaps it is the brilliant red of the
Poinciana blossoms at the start
of the rainy season, or the
deep red drops of precious blood,
spilt in a sacrificial rite?
Then again, it could be the lush
gracious green of springtime meadows
and fields, as new life fills the
void of winter emptiness.
Or perhaps it is the blinding yellow
of streaming sunlight, that
basking glow that surrounds and
holds us in warming rays of promise.
But I think it is most likely
the splash of rainbow colours
streaked across the misty sky
after life-giving rains;
puncturing the atmosphere and
seeping into the parched soil;
the promise of “never again”.
By: H.M. Peter Westin
ENCYCLOPAEDIA AND CYCLOPAEDIA
By: C.G. Wilson
My father kept very few “treasures” except for two very old “huge” books kept in the side shelf of a wooden black cabinet with glass door kept in the hall of my first house. I say first house because it was the house I grew up in until I was nine years old and then it was a procession of always moving. By the time I married at the age of 23 we had moved another six times! What happened to the two huge books in the moving process is a mystery. They just disappeared and I have not thought anything about them until this exercise at our last Writer’s Club Meeting. And when was that? It seems a long time ago. Two, or was it three weeks?
I am digressing, as I always do, and just a few lines become a book! Well, books – huge books. To me, as a child they were huge. Just two of them filled the shelf in the cabinet. I had great difficulty in getting them out and for a number of years I would sit or lay down on my belly upon the floor by the cabinet and read them. Not really read them at first – just turn the pages and look for pictures, and they both contained plenty of pictures. Coloured ones, glossy and there was yellow faded transparent paper between the leaves. In fact even the printed pages were yellow. To me, that was even more of an attraction.
I learnt to read at a pretty young age and I loved reading so it wasn’t long before I moved from just viewing the pictures and read the text. The books were of similar size but one was a greyish blue and the other was a burgundy red with gold lettering and lines. This book was an encyclopaedia and the other was a cyclopaedia. To this day I don’t know what the differences are and a check online and dictionaries hasn’t helped. They seem to be the same. However, these two books were very different, or so they seemed to me, at least physically. The print, the style, the binding and the thickness of the paper was as like as chalk and cheese.
The cyclopaedia’s paper was thicker and the print style was clearer to read. There weren’t so many photographs as the encyclopaedia but there were more drawings accompanying the words. The words in bold type were in alphabetical order. Then, there was the date, 1856. Almost a hundred years older than me. The encyclopaedia had a date of 1920. Even that was old. As a child, twenty years was very old and did not seem a long time away from an hundred.
These two books fascinated me until I grew out of them, I suppose, and when they disappeared I didn’t really miss them until now.
Collections
Seashells, small select shapes,
interesting bits of colour.
I gather and carry them
home; placed in a bucket
on a shelf, amongst
a thousand others:
faded, washed out
without the water.
By: H.M. Peter Westin
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