Dancing the Beans
In Trinidad limber women
danced a path of cocoa beans,
do do petit cacao o
hot sun, red-dust. Bare feet
shook loose debris, turned
the beans with a graceful flick
of a juice-stained ankle. Polished
roulay roulay do do
harvests to a sheen, polyrhythms of old
Africa pressed deep. A Golden Age
for oligarchs. Swaying women
calypsoed heaps of beans
duba do cacao o
to makeshift drums of bamboo sticks,
bottles, and spoons, before machines.
