Friday, February 20, 2009

His Heart Was In Sweet Eleuthera: A Memory

RTL, 1919-2001.

There's a grave where an old man's body lies among strangers. Nobody visits it much. 

It's odd how people the old man lived with and loved and died among were strangers to him as well but it is so-save only one of his who was there at the last.

In the end, they turned out his pockets for spare change and forgot all about
 
who he was
and what he'd been 
and the place he came from
and the battles he fought
and the dreams he dreamed
and the dreams that died 
and what he thought about 
and what he stood for 
and who his people were 
and what he'd done in his life
and the things that angered him
and the children he'd held
and the women he'd loved

and the feel of sweet Eleuthera's soft sand under the bare feet of his boyhood
and the smell of sweet Eleuthera's blossoms
and the slap of sweet Eleuthera's ripples against the hull
and the cries of sweet Eleuthera's market women
and the heat of sweet Eleuthera's noonday sun and the shade of her plazas
and the silence of sweet Eleuthera's circling gulls
and the roar of sweet Eleuthera's long Atlantic combers

if they'd ever thought about it at all.

He lies on a snowy hillside in a sad and brooding northern place where winter's gray clouds press up against dark forests  far from sweet Eleuthera.

Sweet Eleuthera-in the blue southern ocean-is where his spirit rests.

*Eleuthera is Greek for "freedom".


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