My next door neighbor is about 85 years old. She loves the piece above, called Duppy. I explained that it is based on my childhood imagining of what a duppy would look like. “What’s a duppy?” My best explanation is that it is akin to what Americans would call the boogie man or a very scary ghost. Her response to that? “We were afraid of Indians.”
Long before the bobsled team ever was
my sister and I
slid down mountain slopes
past yellow beaked sentinels
stalking about
on their spectacularly long legs.
Into cow pastures we sailed
on our flattened cardboard boxes
stopping only when faced
with the asses of cows.
Momentarily happy
we scrambled to our feet, giggling,
delighted we were wise not to
aim for barbed wire fences
fronting ancestral cemeteries
with their pale Jamaican ghosts
*** *** ****
Some information about the parish of St. Thomas (Jamaica) where this story takes place can be found here:
Bay Area Adventures at WeWereNothing.org 
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