A poem and the view from my bathroom window

The deadline for this year’s Literary Festival poetry competition is fast approaching.  The theme is the environment: a repetitive subject here on the Nature Island of the Caribbean. 

My dear departed friend, Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman, at the tender age of 16, wrote the definitive lament to the Caribbean environment in her poem To Virgin Gorda.  

                They will come

                With tools and machines

                They will bring to light your secret places

                They will demand your mysteries

                They will destroy,

                Build up.

                They will dilute you of your treasures

                And rob you of your chastity.

                They will adorn you like ancient Jezebel.

For poetic inspiration I take myself down to my bathing pool at the river.  Today’s picture is the view that greets me each afternoon as I lay relaxing in the crystal clear waters.  My Dominican poetic muse Jessica Bellevue has christened it, The Fountain of Youth.   

The sketch is one that I made of her at the bathing pool last year, not composing verse but doing her week’s washing.