Obedient daughters.
Patient women.
Compliant wives.
Loving mothers.
But see them alone:
Their eyes
Steal out to sea
Dreaming the dreams
They dare not speak,
Whispering the hope
They pray for their children.
Architects of endurance.
Boulders of determination.
Mountains of strength.
Islands unto themselves.
•••
Opal Palmer Adisa is the editor of The Caribbean Writer and Professor of English and Creative Writing at The University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix campus. She has published in all genres, and her forthcoming works are, Painting Away Regrets, a novel, and Caribbean Erotic, an anthology of poems, stories and essays, co-edited with Donna Aza Weir-Soley, both from Peepal Tree Press. In 2011 Adisa added ten titles to her credit and her works have been anthologized in over three hundred publications, and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese. Visit Adisa’s website for more information on her work.
tongues of the ocean 