​

After Trying so Hard

 

to say something,

something irresistible

 

about the issues at hand,

the poem picks up a guitar

and plays:

 

the way someone

trying a new language

speaks, hoping not

 

to embarrass themselves,

but of course, a few

telltale plornks

 

flounce from the frets—

and to be honest,

the poem doesn’t really

 

get music: all that shimmer

with no semantics—harmonies

for harmony’s sake:

 

major and minor keys,

slur, strum, trill—

but it does hear

 

some syntax in melody,

and a chord could pass

for a word, so

 

the poem tries

a solo: each note

 

scuttling

the larger body of sound

with what feels like

 

optimistic fury,

a menacing

 

affection, a brazen

humility—but I know

what I mean,

 

the poem mutters,

swelling like a soufflé,

 

and this shit sounds

pretty good to me.

 

 

Island of Salt Cay, July 2024 ​

​

 “The salt companies left in ’69.”
- Maurice

 

Mr. Poli’s still here, 92—

thin as a heron’s leg, and Miz Nettie

baking big breads, bright white hair

like moonlight above her brown face,

 

and Willie from Haiti, tending his tiny bar,

and Eloisa who opens her place 

with a laugh. Nobody’s rich, 

but nobody seems poor. 

 

On Salt Cay, History walks

with a bold nonchalance: the salinas

muddy from neglect, the forty-some black folks: 

children of the children of Africans 

bought to rake and carry this flavor

for the world, business buildings abandoned now,

gaunt, ready for collapse, and white people 

mostly gone but for blue-eyed Beatrix and a British couple—

old Europe drifting like steam from their tea.

 

But the beaches blaze egret-white, and the sea

beats a bachata on the rocks—sings, Sunlight

moves in me! More donkeys than people,

forgotten houses muffled in dust, rock-strewn

dirt roads, the subtle hens clucking 

in the underbrush, ants everywhere 

paving thin lanes to their hidden cities. 

 

I’m an American, Black and full of America

so, it’s hard to say where I belong, but I would

come back to say Yes to Salt Cay and the chance

to forget that: yes, to the wary lizards and the donkeys 

whose deep, sleepy eyes dream yes to fresh water 

and stalky greens to eat.

 

And, of course, yes, to the ocean:

so many shoals of blue, so many cool flames

of impossibly ebullient blue, and the grasses

walking with the wind, the bumblebees 

forever revving their wings, the night rains, 

the thorny acacias, and always, 

always a little salt on your skin.

​

 

 

 

 

Tim Seibles is the author of several books of poetry including Hurdy-Gurdy and Buffalo Head Solos, published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. His fifth collection, Fast Animal, published by Etruscan Press, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award and winner of both the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and Pen Oakland Prize for Poetry. In 2017, his book One Turn Around The Sun was released. As the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2016 to 2018, Seibles traveled the state as an ambassador for poetry. His new and selected poems, Voodoo Libretto was released by Etruscan in 2022. With No Hat, his latest, will be published in early 2026.​​​