By: Wallace Williams June 10, 2002
Charles Lindbergh Lands in the Virgin Islands...
Edgar O. Lake’s poem, “Flight,” commemorates Charles Lindbergh’s landing at Mosquito Bay’s pasture (now Lindbergh’s Bay), St.. Thomas, USVI, in 1929. This is the 100th year commemoration of Lindbergh’s birth, and the poet offers Book One (Lindy Hop), from this work, written two years ago in the US Virgin Islands.
“Flight,” divided into three “books,” (Lindy Hop, The Baobab’s Landing, House of Palms) is about Charles Lindbergh landing, the New Jersey disappearance of Lindbergh’s son; and, the concurrent Harlem birth of Virgin Islands folk poet, Lezmore Emanuel, self-styled “Ozani.”
A longer version of “Flight,” includes the poet’s castaway cousin, Novelle, once mistaken for a dead-on-arrival stowaway aboard a “BIWI” (British West Indian Airline) midnight flight to the “Virgins,” in the migration heyday of the Sixties.
“Flight,” has been sent to the U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, at the Library of Congress’s Scholarly Programs Office.
Lake learned poetry at the College of the Virgin Islands under James Dickey, who became a Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
FLIGHT
BOOK ONE: LINDY HOP
We were already gathered
when Lucky Lindbergh came
Snaking his pencil-thin course
between Hoover’s poorhouse remarks
and Mosquito Bay, where Tainos
took flight in canoes from
the death-cry Spanish Armada
Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis
retracing their paddling songs,
shadow-racing across tree tops
where, we had already gathered
But Lindbergh could barely see us
cotched between our dreams
and his airfield pioneer stipend
This Admiral of the skies
crouched behind his fuselage
But, we knew of voyaging;
‘had mastered the horizon stare:
distanced cries of loved ones
We, navigators; flight, our compass
No Kansas, this dried lagoon bed
under harmattan skies, sadly bled
This spirit-craft marks our shark trails
since a sail-maker’s son, sailed West
We watched in well-known clothing
Lindy’s flying speck, winged gnat
When Progress came, it was no star
against the Silver Dollar sky
There was no star for us; not East
Stirred from auction gatherings,
we had already known flight:
passed the ace of blunt collars,
The rustling of weeping forests
helped us cross quiet savannas
The winged clippers taught us:
send up your man, white-trousered,
black-blazered, to greet Lindy
Lindy, caught by sheer surprise –
He wore white trousers too!
Our man bowing, extended more:
a hand, to this Anancy-of-the-sky
He had taxied his wonder-craft:
Spirit of Saint Louis – rough collar
draped around the Jazz bird
He carved the bird to sudden stop;
shrunk the plane against our hills
Lindbergh glimpsed the crowd,
darkened by the blinding sun
White colonials turned into
dancing silhouettes; we too,
came by way of ocean’s flight
We saw him as no dust-bowl
town had seen him; no pressing,
rioting mass, ripping souvenirs
from his heart; we knew Lindy
Lindbergh seemed so frail
descending from the fuselage
He missed his step; our man
caught him; colonials gasped
at center-stage; coloreds ringside
An awkward Marine, hesitant
in the tropic, moved nutcracker-style
to keep us out with cordon rope
but caged the metal bird instead
Our patience grew; small girls
restrained in pinching shoes
Scampering boys in knickers,
Flapper caps, shrieked and jumped
in place; Our mothers frowned:
“The great bird’s here, among us!”
but, three boys strained the rope
and schemed to carve their names
In downward screeching strokes
they carved their shiny names
The setting sun smote light there
Each downward flighted stroke,
a Moses-stick turned parable
Fanti-soaring Christian names :
Rufus, Alton, Austin –
Spirit-carvers on the tail-wings
Each became stern chroniclers:
“Fourth man,” walking ‘mongst us
In some Downstreet ward,
wheezing from raging Cholera
A blacksmith stirred his anvil
The joiner’s arm, to the whining lathe
built a mother-of-pearl table
with flapping ends – jazz bird table
and gave it to the Aviator
Lindy got an apron, worth
Masonic rank, and ample songs:
welcome-gifts, Baobab seeds
of subtle friendship, growing still
Before Lindy left – a week’s regale
Our crafters, disguised musicians
Crafted music: stir-songs from
Deadman’s Alley to auction site
This has been the route of all parades
All flights-of-fancy, all gaiety’s
beginning, and life’s end-of-breath,
Lucky Lindbergh saw this route:
these gifts; and jammed his throttle
Roared into a silvery blur – to
tragic fate afar; we watched him go
That is how we left the bandstand
Our worn leather shoes scuffling
against the rounded cobblestones
Past the model-T’s, lined up like
umbrellas in Pisarro’s Impressionism
To our nascent stark privations
our music craftsmen band returned us
Vicious steps to the cholera yards
Back to our rightful places –
to our righteous rightful flight places
But, three boys had carved names
on the carapace of the bird
We be-bop/create a marching song
A bird land, cholera pasture land
from those carving flight names
What registers the Mother-of-Pearl?
‘The ocean’s shark-infested trail?
No other townsfolk in America claim
Lindbergh’s cowrie-shell footprints
We are the gateway keepers
crafting the dance: the Lindy Hop
ravishing the Charleston
toppling it from the standing:
opening wide the partner’s embrace
American partners, opening the clasp
syncopating the solo, then leaping
but We hop into each other’s arms:
We, Gullah-Fanti, Danish West Indians
migrating to Harlem: music-dance halls
‘watching the Lindy-Hop chase the Hawk
darting between the Speak-easies
the After-hours joints, snaking through
the shadows to the Renaissance
Our bird-flight bird-land movements
passed Van Vechten, Hep, to Birdland
Jim Crow did come: occupation-style
Women folk, dismantling old councils
breaking through the deck timbers
singing at Hampton, like Nella -
brushing off the starchy disregard
directed at our mothers, we soared above
Navy offerings of peppermint medicines
and serum citizenship – bitter truths
Instead, we wielded a silence
but gave no quarter, even now,
to the outsider; we trust only the
Surety of the night-storm, and
The unsuspecting day-landings
The sun had spun a spectral web:
a timeless dust as fragile dreams
Hope grew in shafts of light
Lindy’s sputtering propeller cough
felt like some Adam’s rib taken
Lindy turned, dipped his wings at us
Turned slyly at our knowing masks
Some seed, some birthing, relayed
in his fatal Icarus climbing
We see a Fourth man, Freedom,
through the dust, descending