"Pelicans at Evening" by Jennifer Rahim

Pelicans at Evening

(for Pat Bishop)

Pelicans,

as many as seven,

steadfast as pointers

press heaven,

push east along Toco’s

unquiet run of coast.

News comes here

unhurried

as the beat

of ample wings

holds the eye true

 to evening’s fall.

Now, –

when an ocean’s peace

is gathered into beaks

that could deliver

the miracle of a child,

I hear you are gone.

And what is this word

bequeathed us

as you pass into earth ? –

Our souls full yet

with every

 bold

and fragile

note

you shepherded to birth –

not one

orphaned

or unformed sound

left  unhoused.

So Miss B., 

what is this nothing

as you go your way

to Mucurapo?

What parting gift –

your baton’s final call? ‒

Our tongues stilled,

grief left broke,

for your wanting

no more

than servant’s pay,

wanting too

a sunflower’s witness

at the close

of your giving days.

In this crude season

of curfew 

from ourselves,

your cowbell’s

chosen metre

is perfect song, you

knowing  well

silence earned strikes

the purest note,

speaks clearest,

being free

of all regard ,

being free blesses

with its own question.

           

So, Sister Pat,

is it that you saved

your best wine

for last?

Your passing’s ripe Art –

this holy hush

as that arcane flock journeys

routinely home.

About Pat Bishop

Pat Bishop, a business executive, painter, musician, historian, media commentator, choreographer and fashion designer, was also a renowned ethnomusicologist who, according to Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe, “sang with the Esso Tripoli in 1967; arranged music for Fonclaire, Birdsong, Skiffle Bunch and Desperadoes Steel Orchestra among other groups; conducted Trinidad All Stars, Phase II, Renegades and other steelbands; performed with Desperadoes at Carnegie Hall, New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Philadelphia Academy of Music.” She also directed music for the Morne Diablo Folk Performing Company, worked with Daisy Voisin’s La Divina Pastora Parang Group and directed the Lydian Singers for the past eleven years.

She lectured History at the U.W.I. St. Augustine and Mona campuses as well as the history of art and design at the Jamaican School of the Art between 1970 and 1972

Source: http://www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog/?p=5560

Image Source: http://www.ncctt.org/home/news/164-steelband-panorama-judges-seminar-in-the-works.html



About Jennifer Rahim

Jennifer Rahim is a Senior Lecturer in Literature in the Department of Liberal Arts, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. She is a critic, poet and short story writer. Her articles on Caribbean literature have appeared in MaComere, The Journal of West Indian Literature, Small Axe and Anthurium. She edited with Barbara Lalla a collection of Cultural Studies essays entitled, Beyond Borders: Cross Culturalism and the Caribbean Canon (UWI Press 2009).

Her creative publications include three poetry collections: Mothers Are Not the Only Linguists (1992) and Between the Fence and the Forest (2002) and Approaching Sabbaths (2009). She has one collection of short stories, Songster and Other Stories (2007). Approaching Sabbaths was awarded the 2010 Casa de las Américas Prize for best book in the category Caribbean Literature in English or Creole and has been shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature.