travel log

Vieques

The snakes were here by the grace of God

but knowing Him, He set them down while He fiddled

around with an Egyptian plague, forgetting where He’d left them.

The Navy brought mongooses to eat all the snakes

so they could relax and shell the sunrise coast in peace

but a mongoose, he got to eat, as any chicken farmer will tell you. 

Spain sent Church and State astride the horse, but when conquistador and cleric

dismounted to take in a sunset from Punta Arenas, the sea breeze whispered 
soft and sweet to a restless stallion and his starry eyed mare. 

Ticks in the grass, indifferent to bombs, bitter on the mongoose tongue

bloated equestrians, each and every one, blithe captives of nothing

but the cold blue Atlantic and the turquoise bath of the Caribbean Sea. 

Bored by the endless cycle of creation and destruction, inspired perhaps

to beauty or by niggling guilt, God unveiled the egret, elegant in its simplicity

with a taste for tick and a knack for lazy symbiosis. 

The Malecón sways with rhythms we won’t bring back in our bags, a drink down

the street from the old United Fruit Company dock, a short stroll to sugar mill ruins

unhurried drivers nodding to afro-son, waiting for horses to make their way.