The Goodbye
I am going where you cannot follow My thoughts have grown wings and burst from me in a flurry of unmanageable delight I am fat with eating ice cream I made only for me and happy to pay the piper with...
View ArticleEvent Horizon
Even when the ground seems steady, there is always a farewell in movement I know this because I know the landscape of my island And I have never been its cedar forest My rootedness tangles the soil...
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Happy Banana Tree
“Happy Banana Tree” by James Cooper ••• James Cooper: I am a maker more than I am a taker. I create or stage all of my images. This can range from subtle re-adjustments to made from scratch...
View ArticleSea Change
When did the blue sea creep into their veins and the distances stretch their ambition? Did they feel the ocean breathing for them under the murmur of their English rites? A slow shift and pull at the...
View ArticleThe Stream
Particles in a stream of consciousness Absorbent conductors infused as I float As it flows inside me and flows around me Animated only through the resistance of being Compelled at birth by the law of...
View ArticleUntitled (Bury me under a cedar tree…)
Bury me under a cedar tree On a rain swept winter’s day By the steps to the old church Where the living sing songs To the bones of the dead Have the young men carry My casket and lower it down But...
View ArticleMujan Me
I stand before you – the Many Me’s In order of appearance: Portuguese-Italian, English-Irish, Black, Pequot I always knew I was an Indian I NEVER wanted the Cowboys to win Before I’d ever heard of...
View ArticleLabour Day 2010: Spanish Point Wreck
Red wreck an acre long lapped by the slow sea’s All-digesting flood, your ribs’ enclosure’s almost gone All open to the curving skies Your great caissons crumble towards their last demise Becoming the...
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Fishing Linescribble
“Fishing Linescribble” by James Cooper ••• James Cooper: I am a maker more than I am a taker. I create or stage all of my images. This can range from subtle re-adjustments to made from scratch...
View ArticleSouthlands
your stoic beauty ambushes my senses with an irresistible yearn wild flowers, trees and ancient pathways brilliant green, a magnificent scene craving, beckoning a poet’s first flight embracing all with...
View ArticleThe Fish Pool
THE GREY SADNESS OF MY HEART IS THERE IN THE MOSSY SIDES OF THE POOL WHAT WAS A CLEAR SMILING PLACE FULL OF TURNING CHANGING LIGHTS HAS BECOME A DARK CIRCLE OF STONE ENCLOSED IN LIMITATIONS SET BY THE...
View ArticleDream Walker
Walking In the river again Wearing old sandals Feet wet and cool Water up to my calves Or a little higher If I venture downstream To deeper water on the sandy riverbed. This pastime centers me As when...
View ArticleFine Dining
Scales, guts, eyes, tails and all manner of minor and major fishy parts strewn about the boatyard’s dock; remnants of rockfish, porgy, shark and Pussy’s favorite, snapper. Evil smelling nastiness to...
View ArticleThe Causeway’s Dream
He’s implored and cajoled the limp sea and taunted the formless winds of the hurricane, dared them again and again, to release him from his confines, to join the rocks and reefs, sponges and the sea...
View ArticleBermuda Slavery Exhibit 2010
My porcelain skin binds me to the slave owner’s whip, extended, ready to flay black spines open like gaping snapper. My porcelain skin keeps me complicit; I cringe, face the wreckage local history...
View ArticleThe Bermudas that called me into being
Salt-laden mangroves that bristle at low tide crimson stain from Surinam cherries Mary and I pilfered from Colonel Stevens’ tree fried bananas with cod fish cakes on Sunday morning match-me-if-you-can...
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Temporary Sculptures
••• James Cooper: I am a maker more than I am a taker. I create or stage all of my images. This can range from subtle re-adjustments to made from scratch sculptures. In the most basic of terms, what...
View ArticleIt’s Always About the Return
with thanks to Seamus Heaney The blush of hibiscus bushes lightens road’s edge, spreads over the isle’s south shore. The sea’s sucked out today— the reefs exposed as altar stones. I came home to inhale...
View ArticleThe Abandon of Words
Sometimes words come in a mighty rushing wind Received. Like the Holy Spirit filling the first apostles An unexpected gift of clamoring tongues in your mind You don’t know which to reveal first – each...
View ArticleBeauty
They say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Behold, single mother three children living with her parents to survive. A girl working two jobs, seven days a week, saving to go to school....
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