The Poetry Corner

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.