Crawling out of the same old womb
they headed their separate ways
he, a seeker of fortunes,
she an itinerant with no place of her own
unlikeliest of pairs.
Magpie and dusky footed rolled into one,
he lined his world with trinkets, baubles,
blood red garnets, platinum, aluminum, bauxite,
until several of his houses, filled to the hilt,
exploded into a dizzying array of colors.
Blues of the bluest blues
floated along on the wind
radiating skyward, outwards.
She, his other half,
hungered for some safe place
folding inward
on gossamer wings
shining, iridescent
reminiscent of youthful treasures
like the barrette she’d been given
to contain her hair
on the cusp of dawn.
A slight wisp of a silver clip,
special even after it had lost its luster,
the glistening paper-like synthetic slowly peeling off
to reveal the transience of her gift,
adhesive and plastic,
glued onto a shiny metal base,
the cheapest of alloys,
tin really,
sparkling randomly,
releasing prisms into the air
raining diamonds
alongside shadows
upon the land.
Elusive, no two the same
never again seen
yet continuous in places
long discounted:
South America, the Caribbean,
Asia, Eastern Europe,
and now, today
this Arabic spring.
***** ***** *****
Yesterday I came across the old video in the link below. Although it presents some of my ideas of what travel and tourism ought to be about – grassroots, local and community-based – it caused me to re-examine the idea, taken so lightly in the video: “Once these wheels were turned by slaves.”
Enjoy the people and the place as you watch the video. Make a toast to great rum everywhere. Most importantly, pay homage to the genesis and evolution of rum in Jamaica and the rest of the “New World.” My doing so resulted in the poem, Ye Olde Arab Fling.
Bay Area Adventures at WeWereNothing.org 
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