By Katie Flaherty

For seven days
she is limp as rags
and sweat damp;
our firstborn child
the color of a frog’s throat.

My own Petit Piton is burning
with dengue fever
and it’s too late
to go home now.

The kindly doctor already drove
dirt up our winding banana road
to bring the last penicillin
that didn’t work.
‘No more that medicine can do,
sister . . .’

And sweet Ivy, eh eh
cross her arms over her wide lap
and shake her head
for our poor daughter –
She, we, us,
all setting our prayer vigil
and it is too late now to go home.

The fever never breaks
never breaks and ever me
thinking of other mothers,
sisters on their dirt floors,
who lost their babies having loved them
just as fierce . . . too late . . .

After this blur of close close heat
and worry
and cocks crowing through the night,
She is cool as a fish belly at Oisten’s
better now and we wake
to Hillary and Charlie
bringing us black bananas.