"A Heart Sutra" by Geoffrey Philp

Geoffrey Philp is a Jamaican poet, novelist, and playwright. He is the author of the novel, Benjamin, My Son and five poetry collections: Exodus and Other Poems, hurricane center, Florida Bound, xango music, and Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas. He has also written a book of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien; a play, Ogun's Last Stand, and a children's book, Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories.

A Heart Sutra

I have searched my heart and found

an open road edged with aloe,

wet cedars hanging over a stone fence

where my grandfather leaned

one August evening and surveyed

the posts that grew closer each year

after putting six children through school,

and burying his eldest child, a boy

whom he'd expected to inherit his store,

the land after he joined his father

in a small cemetery in Bethel Town

which would now hold the body

of his son gone ahead to prepare

a way. And even though my grandfather

knew that when he would say goodbye

to the faces that he loved, they would cry

harder than when he put his boy down

to rise with morning glories,

he could still whisper, "It is good."

***

Throughout the month of April, National Poetry Month, poets from the Caribbean and South Florida will be featured on this blog.