2024 November Poems >> the dreams of lady marguerite

No. 04
the dreams of lady marguerite

Tribute to Marguerite Curtin
 Jamaican Historian, Publisher, and Friend

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything.  You are a leaf
that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”—Michael Crichton

the love of trees, sophisticated hills,
soft-rippling streams, and fragrant daffodils
(among the thrills she calls her favourite)
ignites the dreams of lady marguerite.

echoes of windy nights under the moon,
shadows that lose their length at blistering noon,
children whose loon of innocence and sprite
impassion every hour with joyful flight:

these are the condiments that spruce her sauce
when dreary days drag like a wooden cross,
as, at a loss, she fumbles for a bird,
whose piping all her heaving hopes reherd.

church steeples, rural parishes, and ruins
of treasured artefacts, and old doubloons,
village confluence, native conquistadors:
some she adores, some else her soul abhors.

place names and origins, urtexts and rhymes
that cross linguistic barriers, times, and climes,
are vintage wines her spirit ere imbibes,
as epithets her golden pen inscribes

upon the pages of post-progeny,
that justice may know no androgyny:
out of many, one nation under God;
one hope, one love, all-destined to applaud.

© Copyright 2024 November 13
by Clyve A. Bowen♫