EMPTY LOTAuthor(s): DENNIS CRAIGSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2/3 (June - September 1969), p. 64Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653114 .

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Cl

EMPTY LOT (Near Kingston)

Only yards afar snakes the smooth, wide road. Through the trees You can't see it, only hear the motor horns and engines trumpets of Elfland faintly backed by roars of mini-dragons to match this sudden prehistoric outpost. Far from today, yet here the green-black lizards stretch gold bladders translucent from their throats, and chase winged food across the realm of chlorophyll. Strange "how bush on virgin land brings back the dawn of history. These ants are monstrous reptiles which a billion years of time and change have shrunk to hard, black glistening specks of pain. So, fearing dinosaurs I smash a dozen with my shoeheel into the unyielding flesh of a white mahoe. When ants die their upturned under-bellies and final spasms of legs are as much of stark nature as when death comes with sharp steel and bursts of thunder to men and massive beings. You never really notice it though, until there is nothing else around save blue-flies and lizards and an occasional blackbird on a tree and all the living ants that crowd around to prod and feel their dead in an empty lot, where importance in the scheme of things is a rumble of distant sounds.

- DENNIS CRAIO

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