Hassel Island

I went back to Oceana with my Mom last night for a gathering of the Alliance Française. There is a small French community here, certainly dwarfed by the Francophone community, that brings in speakers and screens films and such. Last night there was a book signing. Gilbert Sprauve, a linguist at the University, wrote a book of reminiscences and stories about growing up on St. John. He said he decided to write the book because when he taught French down here, he realized the texts they were using had no cultural relevance to the students' lives. Also, he knew he had a strong tradition of Antillean French writing to draw from.

So when we were walking to the restaurant, I was looking at Hassell Island and felt like I really wanted to capture the light. It occurred to me how funny it is that we have this unspoiled, almost uninhabited island sitting in the middle of the harbor.

I started thinking about how wild Hassel Island still is when I looked at this sailboat. If you're docked to the east of the island, all you're seeing is green.

Then I realized there are more pockets of green than we realize. This hill behind Frenchtown is pretty much undeveloped, even though there have been people living right on the other side for hundreds of years. And I've never even been up the hill.

I've only been to Hassel Island once. Same for Water Island. I'd like to visit again. These are islands I've looked at every day, yet I barely know them.

* * *

Here's another poem by a Virgin Island poet, Habib Tiwoni

My Birthplace
(for my mother Margaret)

Sea man I
was born near
a coral reef

on a bed of sponges
in a world of beauty
surrounded by living

things of all colors
shapes, and sizes
(hunger I never knew)

my cradle was rocked
by ocean currents
fresh and strong

in a water world
that was sunny
and warm

with red/green and
yellow corals soft
and horny like me

alongside my bed
like the ocean
my sea-soul

heavier and deeper
than earth man
taught myself

the languages of
seven sea shells
and made myself a

shekede of sea shells
pardon me while I

comb my sea-moss
hair and prepare
to mount my seahorse

and ride off to the
caves of the green moray eel

where I learned
that unlike man
the predators kill

not for waste
nor cruelty but hunger
O the tales I could tell
about my mother

the sea
If time wasn't burning
you could read the
pages of my eyes