[Poetry] Fijian Easter with My Daughter by Ruth Mota

We arrive under a mango sky at Naviti Beach

greeted by buff men in skirts chanting bula, bula

and a chorus of tiny frogs that bray like donkeys.

You say you’re too tired for dinner and go straight to bed.

In the morning we follow an unsaddled stallion into palm’s shade, 

but women with buttocks and breasts that roll like taffy

lead us out again into the sun and down to the water’s edge.

The air tastes of salt and surf soaps our feet.

When foam recedes, we see we are walking over craze-colored crabs.

Lilac, aqua, and bright yellow claws dig like overgrown toenails

in and out of the bubbling sand, and your laughter, liquid and pink,

rolls in waves down the back of my neck.

We spend the day underwater.

I’m making faces at a scaly green fish

whose bulging eyes are circled with lip-gloss, when I spot your body gliding eel-like over the reef.

With a flip of your fin, you face me.

Your round brown eyes under your mask reflect my fear.

Your doctor’s voice resounds in my ear

pronouncing anorexia like a double verdict.          

Next day our burnt bodies can’t bear to be touched

so we spray and stay, mostly naked in our room

sizing up the real risks of bones and bulges.

And since no one’s asking your age here,

we get buzzed on rum punches, and confess

scary secrets under tiny paper parasols.

On Good Friday you nibble, grimacing at a salad,

before we go riding into the jungle dripping with hibiscus.

Luscious green growth tempts the horses who stop to gorge themselves

until the fall’s roar stiffens their ears and they race to the lake.

Once in the water, I scramble up a slick-faced rock to swing from a vine

my squeals full of bird echoes, my concentric rings embracing you when I drop.    

Saturday we paddle together into the sea.

Soon out, a shrouded sky envelops us. 

The rain no more than pinpricks on our cheeks

until a bolt of lightning splits the heavens open.

Our canoe bobs on the waves, a toy in a tub, thrust on rocks

and you rise, Moses with your staff, your hair plastered to your face.

Your eyes flare in triumph when you dock us at the shore.

Easter sunrise. We wake to Fijians singing hymns in the rose air.

Over breakfast on our balcony we read aloud the final pages of your schoolbook.

Tears cover our cheeks as I hand you back the novel

for you to read the “far, far better place, far, far better rest” thing. 

Perhaps we weep for Carton’s noble deed, or perhaps we envy him his clarity.

For us, beliefs are queries, heaven an illusion,

but oh how we are bound now by these swims we’ve shared

and the relief I feel as I watch you savor pineapple

slather butter on your toast.                   

Ruth Mota lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California where she writes poetry after a career as an international health trainer. Some fifty of her poems have been published in online and print journals including The Atlanta Review, Gyroscope Review, Terrapin Books, and others.