My Palm Frond

After all this time, you still haven't learned
My country's history so short, barely two hundred years,
Yet an eternity longer than the world's Jurassic you know
So well by heart. Yes, my little island
And your giant continent share our minstrel clouds,
This seraglio of clouds that danced
Through countless incarnations before hauling
Their shaking sails above your well-cushioned shores,
Luscious divans like lips paled with cooled desire
Or even frightened in anticipation of a weight
Not quite its own that threatens to sink its effervescence.

I long to plunge my own feet into my island's shores
As roots of their own right, the only true roots,
But the sands shift only to parody my wanderlust,
A refusal to kiss a helot, payback for tainting their pure grains
With feet that have tasted your rococo velvets,
Winding-sheets ensconcing the absence
Of a mind vacated at my touch, the clutch
Of a hungry open fist a palm frond
Baring so jarringly what it says and yet
Lying so prone on my shores like a muse too idle to work
Its many wands into the blurring windstorm of the mind's world
That will whisk away my islet, a bright pendant
To seal your heart no longer fearing its haunting verdigris.