Caribbean Market, Curacao

Caribbean cornucopia captures the eye,
carries it quick back into
its bright-canopied tunnel
of fruit and vegetables; one must tear
away, return to relish the striped melons,
golden bananas, profusion of nameless
orange-gold-green-yellow-plum-red things,
these miraculous things that daylight
and the tongue can taste with equal
appetite, a suspended avalanche
of gourds, mangos, and--what are these
hens (hamstrung?) doing here? They look
resigned: "If we must be fruit,
we'll be fruit"; but their chestnut
and black and white-flecked feathers
and their human-pink claws and mild fretful
eyes, the only ones that see us, are alien
here, catch the mind even as the eye
slips forward to half a seedy slice
of sugary pink watermelon (does it
embarrass the hens to be so upstaged?),
but we are about to tumble off the painting,
and have not yet admired the sure-armed
marketmen, as tame and tethered as the hens
and more alien, tangy reds and yellows,
but not to be eaten, not by the tongue,
but light savors the hand that holds
the melon that leads to long yellow and
round yellow and green...but we've been here
before--pull away, let's look at the lady
in blotch-patterned white, her shadowed
intentness, and the pink lady with
one white sock, who, like our eyes,
is about to be pulled by her caught eyes
into the horn of plenty.

Dean Blehert

Last Updated: October 5, 2002