Landing in Barbados

D. Walsh Gilbert

The door of the ship’s hold opens—

Unruffled sheets of ocean waves unroll

onto beach sand white and fine

as powder on a moth’s wing,

as bleached flour milled for soft bread—

Velvet air, clement and tranquil,

sedative, balsamic, and ambrosial—

After the marathon sea passage,

clouds pillow the turquoise and indigo winds.

Lifted to the ear: the surf, a chirp of frogs,

the infinite drone of bee and mosquito,

the squawk of parrot and the odd pelican—

as uncaught as songs slipping through a pitchfork.

Here, the indigenous Macaw palm, invasive 

snakeweed and pistol plant, the Bearded Fig Tree,

calabash and dasheen, all mysteries

of God’s superlative together

with the heady scent of jasmine’s tiny stars,

pink bells of hibiscus, the bougainvillea,

the frangipani, red ginger lily, the beauty

of the common pigeon pea—

Swooning in the new of it,

Aoife McGuire disembarks with Mary Lynch,

Kitty Finnegan, Annie Nash, Brigid 

O’Toole, Eileen Feeney, Josephine Reilly,

Aoibheann Mulligan, and Maggie Sullivan

with her little one, Francis, born on the ship.

This is not Ireland.

rope-shackled under an apocalyptic sun,

they step lightly—these flowers of Ireland

who shuffle, blink, and tear,

and shade their awestruck eyes.