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Dinner At Eight
By Paul Cameron Brown
At times, I thought of swizzling white rum
in the tropics (not as a vocation),
dropping into the club
for a round of tennis
before dinner at eight
or a quiet set of darts
before retiring.
I had grown accustomed to my new routine
(at least vicariously).
In the best Somerset Maugham tradition
I would dress for dinner,
decline to be patronizing,
avoid the potential slur
if crisp linen did not appear
regularly on my bed or table.
I still found time to stop
for breakfast coffee,
take a moment from regimen
to fondle fresh, wet flowers,
look over the balcony at the
blueness of the bay.
The metaphysical qualities that come
into play erode such morning somnambulations.
The heat depreciated any vainglorious
attempts to lionize the native Caribbean rum.
Tennis and darts become ho-hum,
more of a task than a pleasant diversion.
The little yellowed board seemed
to symbolize not convivial cordiality
but crabbed provincialism.
The tie & collar were intolerable
against the saline tropic night and
seemed rigid in a place and time
the locals could not possibly share.
In short, such things celebrated my apartness.
Linen rarely, if ever, appeared
and to resort to complaints
resulted in only furthering
the distance between one and his hosts.
Even the coffee tasted bitter and seemed
unsuited to the needs of an interloper.
Neither was fruit juice the promised manna.
And one can take only so much nostalgic flower warbling.
The hummingbirds and oleander came to grow
as commonplace and exhausting as the rain.
I began ruminating thoughts back to my previous existence.
Surprised at my illogical shift in allegiances,
I began stealing thoughts more and more surreptitiously
about the naturalness of working a full day,
donning the apparel of a civilized man,
dropping the white man's burden.
Disgust filled me with my former Rousseauian yearnings.
With trepidation, one's dreams
can erect barriers more effective
than the most ill-sponsored illusions.
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