Tropical Testament Poem by Barry Middleton

In the tropics where we were born,
death seems as impossible as eternity.
Eden endures like a painted memory
graced with green waters and hyacinth,
the egret and wildcat together in peace,
a roadside depiction of unreality.
An intoxicating deception tosses the palms.
We do not wish to bury our dead.
The sea returns them to their mother.
In the garden, love curls about desire
in oceanic promises, but its bite is death.
The hand of the artist is hidden.

She told me of the season of roses,
and the season of the barren and the lost.
There is a bud that opens to blighted truth,
that does not yield to false perfumes.
She fled to the north, to coldest snow,
leaving me only the book of the dead.

In spring, April marks the fire season.
Lightning prepares the prairie for rebirth.
There is foolish laughter on the breeze,
and the waters of the gulf are warming.
Those who came to escape the cold winter
turn their eyes to the north and home.
They dread the burning time of year
when heat rises and hurricanes blow,
when natives know the coming of the flood.

death waits in damp heat
the setting sun welcomes night
darkness hides the storm

Like the waves that crash one on another,
like a beacon flashing the news,
There is terror in the heartland.
Even now the unreality relieves.
We seek the banality of lunch with wine.
A pleasing view helps us to forget.
The world lives on in its dull routines,
politics is punctuated by seasonal sport.
She says, 'Never mind, I'll have
what he is having and some tea.'
Still there is that rumble of thunder.

cruelty of man
avarice its only god
the viper's deceit

We may grieve the death of the swan,
the uprooted tentacles of hopelessness.
We tread broken glass with bloody feet,
no music rises from a soulless woodland
as we await the unexpected guest.
Tiresias is transformed to predict the future,
and bring to earth a feminine desire for song.
Yet he could not see the arrow of poetry.
And so the silent earth must grieve,
no swan, no lark, Eden wasted.

In this land there was only war and death.
The invaders came with genocide
where every native died in terror
or privation and exile.
Oh no, the Seminoles are not of Florida.
We may blame it on the Spaniards except
this was not the end of death.
It migrated like a plague far beyond
the fountains of youthful blood.
Death is our legacy.

unrepentant souls
no poetry of Eden
dry and lifeless leaf

There is nothing in the land that lasts,
do not be deceived by a warm breeze,
by a song wafting over the waters.
Death walks with us like a shadow
on a shadowed road.
The heat is rising and a wind is building.
The waters yet retreat.
The obituaries have been written.

On the horizon, a sailor searches destiny.
To the east the storm is raging.
He gazes to the west, his homeland.
He knows she cannot save herself,
and he cannot save her.
He prays for future generations.
That is all that is left to do.

fallen man destroys
the heart is a dark kingdom
evil shared by all