Punt Trench Dam
By Nadia Sagar
Aback the cane-field
Along lusty fields of mottled stalk and punt trench dam
Houses stilted and unstilted
Blue green mud thick against walls of concrete and decaying wood
Ant trails like swollen veins
Crisscrossing greyed greenheart posts
Women washing clothes in cracked plastic tubs
Under the not yet sharp morning sun
Gabardine pants hung on paling staves
Banana suckers
Hanging low with unpicked fruit
Bird vine covering unclaimed spaces
Women on steps thinned by scrubbing
Picking lice from little heads bent
Lashes passing at every fidget
Brother Paul preaches the gospel
The congregation swells, the spirit descends
Chowtal and puja in Temple on Sunday morn
Mother Lakshmi, Mother Durga and Lord Shiva,
Pandit reads Sanskrit, fingers tracing faded words
Prasad and mittai bagged, folded legs catching cramp
In polyester briefs and panties, the children play
War break and tyres burning, tinnin cup knocking
Thief man coming
And black pudding lady basket piled high
With chicken foot souse and plantain chips
Pit latrines rank
The wiri–wiri tree by neighbour Nelly yard exploding
Gloriously
Rain and sun and gravel and mud
And days washed clean and smelling ripe
And the breeze cutting through the fields of cane
Slamming doors and drying beads of sweat
Births and deaths and beatings