-Jean Goulbourne

It was hot today. Almost stifling without the wind. I can see the mangoes hanging happily on the trees. They will be picked when ripe. I can see the poinciana blooming. I can see the bougainvillea basking in the final daylight hours. I can feel the deep sense of satisfaction that another day is gone. But there is a fear within me that each day makes me older. But does it make me wiser? Does the daylight in the summer fill me with knowing? Does it leave compassion dangling like a word never known or understood? Does the day make me love my neighbour more? Or does it stir hate? Each summer, so many gone. Each day, many hundreds past. Each moment, fleeting as the wind. Each second, one that I would like to grasp and hold but cannot.

Mr. Time, you leave grey hairs about my frame, wrinkles about my forehead, memories moving like breezes only to return and haunt my days.

But life has been good to me. Picking pimento under the trees; listening to stories; laughter at jokes; love of parents, siblings, friends; searching for potatoes in the sweet potato gardens; cutting the pineapple from between the prickly leaves; clipping mint to dry and sell; picking up avocados from the soft grasses under the trees; planting flowers and seeing them grow and bloom; going to Alligator Pond to buy fish, roasting and eating them on the beach.

I remember now rolling on the common at my grandmother's place as a child, helping with bun baking, making bammies from cassava, tasting mangoes from every tree, climbing every tree but the coconut palm tree and envying all my cousins who could skinny up that tree with ease.

Now I stand on my verandah looking out. I can see evidence of the building boom. Returning residents coming into retirement. I can see mansions going up around me, cars on the asphalted roads, no more donkeys carrying food to sell. No more women running up from the seaside with fish baskets on their heads. No more children pushing wheels with the sounds of rolling cars on their lips. No more, no more, so many things, no more.

It was hot today. The sound of the cricket was like music in my ears. The sky was flecked with white clouds. The grass still green, the trees still standing, and the bougainvillea still blooming. Now the sun will move with the time and go to sleep as it always does. It is sure to rise tomorrow. Now I watch it as it leaves. I see the colours of the summer sunset as the sun slips downwards to rest. I too will rest and hope to rise to meet the morning with a word of thanks and the old memories will be with me as I make new memories with each new day.

END