(For those of us who remember)
Mount Pleasant tanks were
unencumbered then.
Tola’s donkey cart
brought Christmas up the hill.
Estelle baked fresh loaves of bread
in an oil drum by Mrs. Taylor’s.
The Friendship Rose
was a real sailing ferry,
and Sam McDowell painted her
into posterity.
There were few roads then,
most places were hard to find,
like Hope and Ravine.
Outsiders built simple homes
that did not alter the fragile balance
between us and them.
Now the price of land has
driven that balance away.
It’s the wild, wild west out there,
build where, how, and when you like!
Diesel trucks screech wildly around corners
carrying loads of concrete, cement blocks, stones
that spill randomly onto the roads.
They blow their horns
from one end of the seven mile island to the other
to catch the one oclock ferry.
They belch out poisonous fumes
which give the local kids asthma.
There’s an epidemic of it here.
Cars overrun the small, narrow roads
Mashing up de concrete.
Piles of foreign garbage
flood the small, finite, landfill.
And I believe the people’s paradise
is close to being lost,
the one I knew, gone forever.
The precious Bequia way of life,
fragile, irreplaceable
and to be envied,
now perhaps a mere reflection
in the rear-view mirror of time.
A lovely elegy to precious innocence lost. Makes me think of youthful days when we all believed in the black and whiteness of right and wrong.
Thanks so much Sue…really appreciate..yes loss of innocence…keep thinking of Jackson Brown’s song this is the end of the innocence.
Reminds me of the saying we had when we first moved to Bequia – Why would we want to change what brought us here in the first place? Unfortunately, the island has changed, as your poem so eloquently explains.
Thanks so much Susan. I do feel that in particular unregulated change is always a bad thing…then the richest and the strongest win out. California sets an example here of what is needed strong local governmental rules around building and water rights. So important to protect the common good! Hope to see you one day on Bequia and look forward to your next book!