Written piece
Watershed
Jacquiann Lawton
Jamaica
About this piece
Living on an Island in the Caribbean, a place of foreboding beauty, this poem is about the omnipresence of Water as cultural significance and value, shared by Island States of the Commonwealth, where the horizon is a continuum.
The horizon’s metronome
resounds timeless encounters
exchanges of
land and language, biodiversity and culture
reflecting one
celestial dome
sheltering
dreamtime, shadow souls, stepwells of joy, ancestral wisdom
Aboriginal, Amerindian, Asian, African, Pacific, European
recalling mythical and sacred watersheds
Commonwealth islands are of the seas and oceans
ridge to reef- water falls
mountains through valleys across plains
by streams, rivers, lakes to coastlines - clouds
in this constant recursive zone of surf
water waves release energy
these emerald rooms of
ordered motion, give way to turbulence
Vessels navigate barren – bleached reef
seeking to mine resources of the earth’s crust, within the Cockpit and underseas
importing exporting: goods and services
while populations tip coastlines and climb to inhabit the crow’s nest a-top mountain
to level the keel, as salty gulps erase urban footprints
villages, town centres
settled on marshes, mangrove terrain, along riverbeds and in
contours of flux
Lips, parched skin, sun leathered
Dried earth agri-cultures thirst
Bush fires without boundaries
Sargassum blossoms camouflage
Sahara dust
And reservoirs reflect spooned helicopters dipping bags like dragonflies
to quell
The horizon calls winds of convection
ablaze with the comforting sound of water’s flow
anticipating the frightful roars
tropical storm- typhoon -hurricane-earthquake- volcano
while entangled dwellings; intimate, domestic, post-industrial, digital
bow to the fisher’s torch and are
cooled by the midnight dew…
wild berries, rambutan, mangoes, pomegranate,
star-apples of Eden.