by Sarah Carleton
A single hummingbird measures the crash and pull
of waves beneath a wide sky. No green shimmer
and near-invisible flight—the sprite holds still,
black as a quarter note. Palms twice the girth
of the ones back home rise into the clouds.
Royal palms, they’re called, a name that tastes
British, like Marmite or digestive biscuits.
Roads are jammed with fuchsia-rose-lemon-
violet bougainvillea vivid enough to match
the turquoise water, while crotons splash maroon
into the shadow spaces, and all over Bridgetown
ginger sprawls in clusters just like ours
but tall as houses. Clearly we have traveled.
We flew past the limits of what we could picture
and emerged with lenses scrubbed clean as if
fresh from cataract surgery
to find pines too massive to grow in sand
standing firmly rooted on the beach.
The way nature bypasses its own laws
lightens me. I float awake when mourning doves
call forth the sun, and it blooms and spreads
across the pale like watercolor on paper.