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Virgil Suárez

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Skiffs

In the azure haze of Old Havana
harbor, on this side of Regla, like teeth
bit into the waters, a piling of bones,

whose? Like Hemingway’s Old Man,
sturdy white against a ravage of pull,
this weight of rusted anchors in depths

so green, it makes for vast longing.
Cutting across the waters, they look
like a dream of serpents, a dragon’s

child-smooth, evanescent, pure
in its desire to touch water. A bliss,
vapors of memory, an egret’s feather.

For the city dwellers with ocean-view
windows, they stand for possibility,
hope of getaways in the middle of the night.

Children transform them into kites
in fitful sleep, billowed under netting,
castaways, buoyed like their past lives.

 

Virgil Suárez was born in Cuba and has lived in the USA since 1974. In addition to novels, memoirs and anthologies, he has published three poetry collections. A fourth, Palm Crows, is due from the University of Arizona Press in 2001.

Page(s) 55

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