A heavy cloud of Saharan sand
swirls over the Caribbean for several days.
The sepia veil is so intense, at high noon
the sun looks like a full moon.
A thick film of dust on everything.
We must stay inside. The air quality is compromised.
Ever the poet,
a part of me smiles at the notion that,
in the current climate,
tiny bits of African earth rise by the billions to take flight.
They cross ocean. They swarm
and storm the New World. Dervish, they whirl.
Fill the streets. Echo. Pass over. Dare you to step outside
without a mask.
Lisa Pegram is a Washington, DC native writer and educator. Author of Cracked Calabash (Central Square Press) and a Larry Neal Writers’ Award finalist, her poetry and essays have been published in anthologies by Random House and Black Classic Press, and magazines such as L’Officiel and Atlas Obscura, among others. She served as DC WritersCorps program director for a decade and has taught a love for reading and writing at every level from elementary school to postgraduate. Lisa has an MFA in Creative Writing, and an Executive Certification in Arts & Culture Strategies from UPenn. She is currently based on St. Maarten where she works remotely in the US as a literary publicist and acquisitions editor.
