Flight of the Firstborn - Peggy Carr

Enjoy another beautiful poem by Peggy Carr - Flight of the Firstborn

Flight of the Firstborn

He streaks past his sixteenth year,
small island life stretched tight
across his shoulders
his strides rehearsing city blocks
college brochures
airline schedules
stream excitedly through his
newly competent hands
his goodbyes blurred like neon
on a morning gone suddenly wet
I'm left stranded
on a tiny patch of time
still reaching
to wipe the cereal from his smile.

**************

Peggy Carr - Vincentian Poet

Peggy Carr is a journalist and poet from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She is the author of three collections: Echoes from a Lonely Nightwatch (1989), Fresh Tracks in an Ancient Land (1996), and  Honey and Lime (2006).

Here is an interview she gave to the BBC, and which featured her poem, Flight of the Firstborn.

Virtual Bookworm Publishers, which published her collection, Honey and Lime, also has a nice write-up about her life and work in St. Vincent.

Enjoy below a sampling of her work, in the poem, Moving. This poem resonated with me because I have moved from the Caribbean to Canada, and then the US.

Moving

Once again I tear pieces
off myself
trying to unglue from
one more place
gather souvenir bits of
shrapnel from another spent cycle
mix a fresh palette of
aspirations
and head for
the monochrom horizon.

Peggy Carr. Copyright 2006.

First person to leave a comment gets a copy of Honey and Lime. Please send me your mailing address.

Please check out Peggy Carr's engaging poems!

Kwame Dawes Appointed Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

Congratulations to Kwame Dawes who was one of three new Chancellors recently appointed to the Academy of American Poets.  Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica. He is the co-founder of the Calabash International Literary Festival.The other Chancellors are Marilyn Chin and Marie Howe. The Chancellors will serve a six-year term.

Here are more details from the Academy's website on these interesting poets and their new role.