The Picnic
After James Tisiot’s Holyday (The Picnic)
Last Night comes upon an opening where, through cavities
in the tree line, the black lake gleams still, and clumps
of golden leaves dangle low, touching the ground—
a strange light covers everything. She has spread
a white cloth on the rusting grass, and laid the sweating
pumpernickel with a fist-sized hole through its
black crust, and inside she has buried the pink flesh
of salmon that flakes like a burst wound—crumbs
and bits of grain are spilled like dry blood
on the white sheet—the pattern of leaves, the sprint
of clouds over the surface causing things to shift
like they do when sea bounces off the glassy water.
Bread, an ancient canteen of those silvered layered
trays, a silvery thermos—all her father’s, the things,
she says, he left for her—that and his grand open heart.
The canteen, the thermos all come in a worn satchel,
the one her father carried, the flat side bouncing
against the flanks of the white stallion as he cantered
over the hills and dray paths of St. Elizabeth, checking
the cultivation of onions, scallions, yams, cassava
and the wild children he seeded the hills with—
populating the villages with this breed of arrogant
infants who knew their father by the clop of his horse,
the sharp white of his helmet, the dark broad
dignity of his forehead.
In those trays he carried his ritual meals; the tidy message
of love: a wife’s caring hand, letting the smell of heavy
coconut oil be the aroma of their union, the scent
in her hair, in her fingers, on her skin, on their sheets
long after his howl into the night, his snore, his departure
before the crowing of the cocks. This scent is old
as meaning for his daughter, the conjure to tie her to home.
She lifts the layers in ritual silence, planting
each tray of steaming truth on the sheet.
Last Night lies with his hand cupping his heavy head,
his flank stretched flat on the ground; watching
her name each element: ackee and salt fish, a gold
cracked fruit aflame with the red and white of tomato
and onions, seeds of pepper scattered like warnings
along the gleaming gold of the flesh; steamed fish
with soft okras spilling from its gut like roe from
the disembowelment; peanut soup brown as swamp
swimming with slivers of scotch bonnet and the obscene
skinning of the peanuts, boiled to a tender readiness;
the multi-shaded fried plantains, the vernacular of skin
on this island from the crisp black to the yellow
belly of the open flesh of the fruit; the noble humility
of rice and peas—the brown staining of the rice, the ribbons
of scallions and the mesh of thyme branches sucked
dry of all aroma. The colors startle the somber scene,
London in the dull season before the freeze; the world is gray
with longings that will not burst, the stoic order of passion
held in. Last Night says softly, “In another time, this would
be the scene of some artist’s succulent fantasy: white
frocks, cups of tea, trays of cake, alabaster bonnets,
men in tailored cream suits staring dumbly at the river’s
rippling; finding in these simpler repasts the meaning of desire.”
She calls him fancy, which is funny, she says. “My father
hear you staring into the hills, and then spit and ride away.”