Do you remember when the children played in the street:
Marble holes, hopscotch and running round bare feet?
Do you remember when conflict was managed easily —
After the dust settled they’d play together happily?
A faint event is lodged in my recent memory
When all of us were left without electricity.
This woman brought to all of us some form of misery,
Yet still she managed to grant us this bond, this unity.
Just reminisce: Post Irma, while walking on the street
You’d see the families bonding in balconies in the heat.
I saw some children playing jump rope down in the yard.
While parents talked together looking on, they were on guard.
Now that light poles are back up and television now works,
The screens have taken over; the tablets do the legwork.
No dust is getting settled as conflicts become more grand.
Instead of compromise, we spill blood on our land.
I miss the sight of young ones jumping up and down the street.
I miss the sight of dominoes in balconies in the heat.
But what I miss most of all is that silence around six
Or when the darkness crawls in and takes over while we sleep.
There’s more to say about the time of Irmatitis,
A condition where Miss Irma was blamed for crime we commit.
But what is left unsaid are the moments that we’d have spent;
The quality and quantity of time for each event.
Continue giving family time, great values taughtat home,
And don’t let another hurricane come and teach us what we know.