Tropical Blood

Nov 19 2915

Her tropical blood.

Salt-water thin

ran hot.

Her sumptuous skin,

cool

as loosely woven cloth.

As if her body could breathe

through every supple inch;

a small amphibious creature

in its permeable cover.

Her languid grace

in the indolent heat.

Sultry eyes, half shut

like a permanent act of seduction.

No wonder why

she never would be rushed.

And her sun-bleached hair

that was untamable

in the swampy warmth, equatorial rains.

Which I had always loved,

she struggled to straighten.

Who followed me north,

but only once.

Unbearable cold

that clutched at her throat

left her gasping for air.

Ice-picks, piercing her heart

like hard tungsten steel.

You’d think a tropical flower

would last in the cold,

unaccustomed, though it is.

Fresh

as a gaudy orchid

in the florist’s glass-walled fridge.

Or cool jasmine’s

undetectable scent,

volatile atoms at rest.

Yet still, she refused to stay;

fleeing winter

at the first cold blast.

As if she had known

the moment she arrived.

When the heavy door hissed open

and she stood, looking out.

As if she couldn’t help herself.

Like a butterfly, migrating south,

her gossamer wings unfolded

and she fluttered into flight.

Erratic, but sure,

tacking left, then right

and heading straight for the light.

The subject was originally a "he". I was thinking of Jo-Jo, a man I met in Turks and Caicos (my sister-in-law's handyman and all-round Mr. Fix-it). He was raised in the Philippines, and had lived all his life in the tropics. I complained of the heat. He recounted his only visit to Canada. It had been in the fall, and hardly up north: but the cold hit him with physical force as he stepped off the plane, and he never could get warm. I think I understood, because a northerner gets a similar feeling stepping through the airplane door into that heavy tropical air. It's like crossing a 2-dimensional boundary. The muggy atmosphere seems to have a substance you never noticed before.

But the poem was far more interesting when it envisioned a woman instead. And then, what would be more natural than to make her flight from the arctic chill a metaphor for lost love and disillusion? I think the end gives pause. The butterfly's wings recapitulate the delicate beauty of the flowers. But they also recall a moth: helplessly attracted to light, but risking immolation as well.