Summer Tunes

SummerTunes and other poems

By Allison Hall 1

Text copyright: Allison Hall Illustrations: Microsoft Clipart online et. al.

The book is for reading purposes only and the text or illustrations should not be sold without the written permission of the copyright holders.

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FAMILY PICTURES Š Allison Hall

On the piano, and on walls and furniture, are the family pictures.

Speakers of my life; that carry a little piece of history hued carefully in them.

Old Ben’s picture in black and white and in another corner, my picture, coated in yellow, black, white, brown, red and blue Pictures that speak of dreams and visions.

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SUMMER TUNES (Inspired by the Devil’s Race Course road in Jamaica) Š Allison Hall Illustrator: Unknown

The gold sun shines relentlessly on the dull grey road, filled with pot holes that spot its coat of asphalt.

The road maneuvers up the hillside as small boys race behind buses loaded with bag and baggage.

The buses tilt and precipices are revealed.

Trees clustered together form a carpet green that hides the dry brown earth of the mountain.

Insects hum the summer tune as they dart merrily from branch to branch Birds fly over searching the trees for fruits, and lizards that lie camouflaged under leaves carefully scrutinizing hungry cats and carefree flies.

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Oh school is over and all its gates closed But that does not keep the joy, the freedom of children away.

They loiter in school yards and meadows picking hibiscus and robbing plants of pollen dust Men smoke pipes and knock dominoes on tables as if mending them Women bake and gossip Oh, it is that time of year again when the countryside sings a carefree song

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BEAUTIFUL ISLAND © Allison Hall

Beautiful island in the tropics with beaches littered with tourists who darken blanched skins, and your people speak your history in their names, their shades, their grins.

Beautiful island in the tropics scattered in the Caribbean Sea, whose shores have seen many tribes that vanished that submitted whilst others fled.

Beautiful island in the tropics a new era has begun.

Watch your concrete monument take your green environment Watch your neo-colonizers steal your people’s ideas Watch your new born taste form a continent of waste.

Beautiful island in the tropics Your end is drawing near Your land’s fighting a new war Your land’s showing no fear

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HOME THOUGHTS

I miss those mountain ranges that stretch like giant mounds across the earth; each seem to race to touch the sky.

I played in tall grass with razor edges just to pick the last hibiscus. ]

I thought that it was only yesterday that I caught that butterfly with wings splashed with paint.

Now when stings of sleet hit my face like wind-blown sand or my hand is dead from the coldness of the air thoughts of hot summers with crowded beaches fill my mind, and the blossoming of hibiscus and bougainvillea that form a collage on fences and leaves that dance on rivers like toy boats and mornings when frost forms foam on grasses Yes, I miss these most

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