Cocoa painting 2

"pod shells with wet beans and bucket"
Acrylic on canvass, 16" x 20"

Sign 2

When you work, hard and long,
in the hot sun and you go home,
to come back the next day to find
that someone has picked all of your
waternuts, that are young still,
or mangoes, half ripe,
or oranges that your father wanted to sell to buy sugar,
then you can understand the man
who found it was time to put up this sign.

Of Portals, Places and Preservation

The red door at the top of Young Street.
























What was once St John's wholesale
























and the bar in Halifax Street.

To Expectation

And when I tire and think of you
and all the things that you can do,
displaying hard won confidence
becomes my final obstinance,
and in the face of all your foes
I throw abandon, where it grows,
unabated, in the shade
of high achievement, duty paid.

Sign 1

Found

It is not unusual, during the course of a morning,
as we weed or mole or fork the land, for us to unearth
some pottery shard or rusted garden implement from
long ago. Flat irons and horse shoes, axe heads and hoes,
red clay roof tiles and nuts and bolts, often present themselves
as the earth is turned, but, today, I found...........























We have had, 'river so high we cannot cross', rain,
and as I was running to the shed to shelter
from another downpour, the rim caught my eye.
Snatching it from the okra bed,
where it lay, smothered in the red mud,
I knew I held a pipe bowl in my hand.
We have found them before, at home, in the yard,
behind the house. T's grandmother used to smoke one.
White clay with a basket weave design.























Only on letting the rain wash over
what lay in my outstretched palm,
did I see the face stare back at me.
This was not grandmother's, nor her mother's
but a pipe from the 1800's,
when those that worked this land
did not do so from choice.

Just Trees

Leucaena leucocephala, The lead tree..
The cow likes it for breakfast
and I, the seeds as necklace.

Joy