A Small Hotel In Jamaica Poem by Bernard Henrie

The scent of oleander airbrushed
against my wife’s coiled turban
of room towels;

black skin, dark earth root; eyes
half-closed under maroon eyelashes.

Our hotel is balanced on a steep
hillside in sight of the ocean,
water flows from an overturned jar
into the basin of an inlaid fountain.

The corridors and veranda fill nightly
with new scents; I imagine them
from ever-green clumps of grassy
leaves and cone-like fruits.

At certain hours a thin vapor
passes through the faded pink hotel
and we stammer once again in love
with our homeland;

later, bristling mango blends
with auto horns from the lower road;
a backdrop for the burgundy night air
of river boats with yellow running
lights slipping to the estuary
at Ocho Rios.

We are both home again to Jamaica;
the deep black of our hearts
masking our unfashionable hatred
of Europeans with white specks
in their blood, our hands and faces
scented with burned-out plantations
and glazed acres of sugarcane.