Lemon Passage

Tacking the Lemon Passage again
for the memories after the war’s end -
Palm trees and dust,
the flag of a white-washed sky…
Without the rush of falling
it’s hard to imagine
this is the same place,
coral reefs the depths of old friends,
still visible, but out of reach of the senses.

The baptism of equatorial passage
is a penance-type of release,
an instant shift of the seasons  
confession, a love-talk of the soul, 
melodramatic scenery 
like kerosene on the flesh,
survivor's guilt of survival; 
Manifest Destiny here
razes the spirit, as well.

Having painted her garden gate 
and having made her 
a home without her in it,
I tell myself it was good for practice,
readiness tensing,
incoming shells, the screams of
islands, homefires burning,
yellow ribbons’ tossed tide, 
seabirds’ flipper-feet imprints 
trampled nests ringing cliffs, 
their screams, symbols.

Tacking the Lemon Passage again
for the memories,
Palm trees and dust, white-washed sky,
an ocean desert, alluring in its call
this standing wake, the ferrying of ghosts 
a good fit, tempting.
Hemingway stayed on his island, too
in the end, never leaving, 
and without the rush
it’s hard to imagine
breaking that circle.


© Jonathan Bohrn (2004)