Susan Castillo Street

Sailing to the Indies

I hear the sailors mutter.
“This Genovese has led us
to the edge in his mad quest
for gold and souls.”

The sea stretches before us,
bolt of blue silk draped
over flat tabletop. In their minds
they look at the horizon, see us sail up to the rim.

go careening down the currents
spiraling into dark space
where monsters lurk and lie in wait for those
who question.

What do these fools know with their false certainties.
The land that lies before us, just beyond Earth’s curve,
with endless golden towers and Christ-seeking native souls

is the Indies.

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Susan Castillo Street is a Louisiana expatriate and academic who lives in the Sussex countryside. She has published a book of poems titled The Candlewoman’s Trade. (Diehard Press, 2003), as well as several scholarly monographs and edited anthologies. Her poems have appeared in poetry magazines in Scotland, the US, and Luxembourg and in online publications (The Missing Slate, The Stare’s Nest, Nutshells and Nuggets, Literature Today, YorkMix, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Snakeskin). She is a member of two poetry groups, The Conduit Street Poets (London) and 52.

Susan’s blog can be found at http://www.thesalamanderandtheraven.blogspot.co.uk/