April 18, 2018Rayon LennonHeard

“I moonlight as a clinical therapist and in one session last fall I asked a client to write a forgiveness letter to himself; and in another session, I asked the same client to write a forgiveness letter to someone who has hurt him. I wrote my own forgiveness letters as well, which gave birth to this poem. I should also mention that I am a Barrel Child. The phrase ‘Barrel Children’ refers to, in particular, Jamaican children whose parents—compelled by social and economic challenges—choose to leave their children behind in Jamaica to pursue economic opportunities in other countries such as Canada, England, and the United States of America. These parents then send back barrels full of food and clothes and other items to their children. A good many of the children left behind face physiological and psychological challenges. I have devoted my life to correcting this problem. It’s easy to say too that this lightly fictionalized poem was informed by the shock of watching Trump win the election last November and our ensuing crush on Canada. Or that this poem is a meditation on mortality, in general. In some ways, it’s an elegy for the life I could have lived. It’s a letter and a prayer to a God I tend to disappoint but who continues to fill my life with otherworldly blessings; a forgiveness letter to my parents too, who I love dearly, though—for complicated reasons—I don’t believe I’ve ever told them I love them (except in poems). They have done the best they could for me and for that I’m forever grateful. It’s a love letter to New Haven, Connecticut; Hamilton, Canada; and all of Jamaica. And finally, a thank-you letter to and an elegy for Derek Walcott, the towering, Nobel-winning, Caribbean poet and my literary father (though I’ve never met him) who left this world last spring and whose life was, like mine now, an answered prayer.”