Poem by Danielle Boodoo-Fortune

February 2011

Water Rushes Like Memory

Notes of evening
            play upon sand,
                        scatter dried stars
                                    from treetops.

 

                                    There are poems
                        in me, unwritten.
            My senses hush,
words sink like stones.

Overhead, seabirds,
            taut with sound, scream
                        because they need to.

                        Wind whistles through wet rock,
            the sun shifts on a far shore.

I write this poem
            because I need to.

                        Waves crash in my bones,
            tides ebb and flow
in my throat.
            A cry, dissolved,
                        is washed away.

                                    Water rushes like memory,
                        finds its echo in my body.

            I learn to speak all over again.

On this edge of land
            I lean into the light,
                        cast my voice
                                    like a net
                                                into the sea.

 

Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné lives in Sangre Grande, Trinidad. Danielle has been previously published in Bim: Arts for the Twenty-First Century, the Caribbean Writer, Tongues of the Ocean, St. Somewhere Journal, Canopic Jar Poetry Journal, and Anthurium. She is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.