Queer

Twenty years ago I visited my father’s birthplace

walked streets now paved that would have been mud

leaned over the stoned wall to watch a Caribbean sea

swell, with the detritus of cruise ships littering the beach.

I had been told it was dangerous to linger here

to move swiftly through the rouged and lipsticked bodies

plying their trade, or just going about their business

I could not tell, having had little sight of men in women’s dress

unlike today.

He was a pretty boy, my father

blonde and blue-eyed in a world of dark Hispanic forms

I am told he was wild, rode his father’s horse

while still a child

and fell asleep in church

immune to his father’s sermons.

Yet he played the harmonium which accompanied the hymns

following in his mother’s footsteps, rather

than the father

whose missionary zeal left no space for a growing son.

I have wondered about those early days

his wildness

whether early experience primed him for the navel life

which drew him into war and the company of arms

sinued, tattooed, but perhaps loyal and loving.

It was a gay crowd he moved in when he met my mother

she naive, unaware of the need for the camouflage she would become

but they came together

and created me

a creature still looking over the sea wall for something to give perspective.