Ode to the Christmas Breeze

MARGARET D. GILL

 

Dear one, when I recall
how hot an ting this August did
and den wid all de other nameless ting it had
in all this covid 
You be most welcome den.

I must admit it had me fraid.

Who did not fraid? I ask myself,
and not a soul to hold onto.
So love had to be said
and comfort taken where it will.

And you know how we mout does don't have cover.

Bad word and begging please 
for license to blind people and dey mother. 
Easiest ting the sword we carry 
in we mout could do, but speaking love 
and hope and life into we oneanada?
B, 
it was the hardest season, B, ah have tuh tell yuh...

Listen, I even called down bipolar.

And watching all these people crisis out pon economics, health, pon politics.
And watch it B—
is only me they pushing to take meds—Where yuh meds?
Yuh got yuh meds? Good Lord, I safe pon medication,
while everybody mad as—
Well, let me not go there.

All I want to say is welcome.
Bring in your cooling sentiment and self.
Remind we Christmas coming.

Margaret D. Gill, published and performance poet following in the footsteps of her mother, who wrote plays and recitations for children's Sunday school concerts.  Won her first international award for poetry, Shankar's International Children's Competition in India, at 14.  2007 Visiting Writer to Hong Kong Baptist University and Shandong University, China, as part of their jointly hosted International Writers' Workshop. Inaugural first-prize winner, Frank Collymore Literary Award (FCLA), and 2006 second-prize FCLA winner to Kamau Brathwaite. Latest performance, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Nelson Mandela 100 years birthday celebrations.

Barbados
Bipolar
Christmas
COVID-19
Pandemic
poetry