DC Poets: Sydney March

Brother

I remember when our laughter

filled those empty spaces

between the days and nights

and you and I were flashing flames

no one blocked our paths 

in those shining bandit-day

of stealing mangoes, fistfights

cowboys and soccer games

poverty blessed us then

with her savage songs

and we grew hard and strong

beneath unyielding suns

time sped crazily

beneath our dancing feet

as new dead leaves 

trampled old dead leaves

but we were having fun

then years gushed by in torrents

breaching the sturdy banks

that preserved our sacred river

silencing the music

that filled the space between us

desperate, we held on 

shored up the levees

but then we had those other cares

each cherished his own weakness

for me there was no welcome

and you were not invited

our continents had drifted

out of sight and hearing

our laughter served no longer

to fill those empty spaces

as they did before our ships set sail

for that uncertain twilight

Sydney March is a Jamaican poet, essayist, musician and journalist residing in Washington DC. A member of the WritersCorps (1996-1998), he had been a recipient of grants from The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, as well as Jenny McKean Moore and Lannan Fellowships. He was awarded a Poets and Writers Workshop Grant (2007). Sydney currently serves as a panelist for the DC Commission On The Arts Artist Fellowship Program in Literature and the Larry Neal writer’s competition.   

Publications include “Dark Warriors of the Spanish Main,” Smithsonian New World, Smithsonian Institution 1992, “The Maroons of Jamaica” Encounters, University of New Mexico Press 1994 a collection of poetry “Stealing Mangoes” Mica Press, 1997, and essays and poetry published in numerous anthologies. He is currently a resident poet at CentroNia and teaches at Montgomery College.

He has read at the Miller Cabin, The Library of Congress Poet at Noon series, The Writers’ Center, MLK Library, The Smithsonian Institution, Iota, The Arlington Arts Center and many other venues. He is a woodwind player, who sometimes uses musical accompaniment to enhance public readings.