Here it's all Mango

Here, it is all mango and Bob Marley, blue skies, boats bobbing,
palm tree leaves stretching, pointing, tickling, waving
walkways of branches buzzing with the feeding of baby doves.

Canary yellow cheeky sparrow baubles sparking the dark places,
sunlight vitality through the clouds in bursts of the brightest warmth -

This sun on a canvas is how one should feel standing by the shoreline
when ones dreams are wrapped in a twig boat,
saying, "it is not a boat, and it is sailing to the past"
while she shakes her head, smiling, painting Afrika
on the beach. It could end like this,

this day of their watercolour, she remembering the lilies and bridges
running over a warland, raindrops splattering the pond,
or she painting the sunset – crimson, all wedges
of luscious oils from behind the wind shield of the School Bus,
thick swirls of evening icing the cake; but it is still

not late enough. He is watching while hidden stars navigate
his little boat bobbing, at last disappearing on the turning tide,
and she, dreaming of the bougainvillea colours draping the wall,
the dividing line of day and night yet to slip fruit over the horizon,
colours bleeding into the orchard through a brickwork chink.

Why to look for the exuberant shine defining the shape
of exactly how they stand when the ocean is before them?

To see shape in this light and remember it anywhere,
to feel it again in the flicker of an eyelash, or in another
small hand, as a backdrop to any liquid scene:

He asks if this is where they came in Midsummer night's dream,
laughing at children riding donkeys for two whole English pound.

Her Grandmother lived in a house behind a wall like this,
and holding a hand, peeks through; the pollen dusting her hair.
We wait for this; singing songs on the way home, she asking,
if this was called 'The Ocean', an 'Estuary', which London station
would she need, to see The Thames River like Will Yam Blake?

a little face lighting up that it was only a short walk south,
days later, sneaking out the back gates one afternoon with her mates
to see if they could find some smog, a Tyger, Tyger –

- while here, it is all mango and Bob, Marley, blue skies, boats bobbing,
palm tree leaves waving walkways of branches buzzing
with the feeding of baby doves.

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