Poetry Friday From the USVI

Today is Poetry Friday, and it’s been a few weeks since I posted. We’ve been in the United States Virgin Islands since January 19th. The weather has been gorgeous with little fluctuation—78-81 degrees continuously—even overnight!

We brought our neighbors with us for the first week. We had to thank them for helping my husband build our garage/woodshop at the lake last summer. I think they had a good time. It was hard to tell, but the debt has been repaid now.

My husband and I had a few days alone since they left on Sunday. It’s been a week of sand, sun, and further exploration of St. Thomas and St. John.

We snorkeled on Maho Bay, which was calm and clear. We saw sea turtles and colorful fish. Maho Bay is off the northern coast of St. John. We took a tour to get there but the catamaran only had 25 people and three crew.

Returning to St. John on Wednesday this week, we went to Cinnamon Beach, the longest beach on St. John. Getting there involved a ferry ride from St. Thomas to St. John, and an open-air taxi ride from Cruz Bay to Cinnamon Beach, a 30-minute ride over the mountainous terrain and narrow roads.

• All photos and text are owned by Carol Labuzzetta, no permission to copy or distribute in any form. © 2025.

Most importantly, I’ve had a chance to relax and rest after caring for my dad. My sister is with him now, and he has been put on hospice care but remains at home, as were his wishes.

I’ve had the chance to write, establishing a routine of doing it in the morning while my husband swims his laps in the resort pool. It provides me some quiet and him some time to exercise alone.

I’ll get to the poetry I’ve drafted in a moment. But, I also wanted to let you know that I wrote an article on Medium on the loss of the American Prairie that was boosted. It’s been eight months since I had a boosted article on Medium.

The difference with this one is that it is an academic piece – with embedded links to sources. In other words, it is a researched article dealing with a subject matter I have knowledge and experience writing about. The publisher, who writes for the BBC and The Guardian, among other credible magazines and media outlets, appreciated my writing.

I can send you a friend link if you wish, just let me know. I’d need your email to do so. I found posting the friend link on WordPress does not publish – only the paid link appears. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Alternatively, I did try to put the friend link for the article by highlighting Amerian Prairie above, we’ll see if that works.

As you might guess, I have another piece in the works already!

Poetry Inspired

As you might imagine, being in such a beautiful place inspires poetry. I’ve started several poems. All are in draft form. Here is one I started called

Four Feral Donkeys

four feral donkeys
visited the beach today
foraging for food, 
it seemed, or some say

one entered first,
cautious and shy
then two, three, and four
appeared, it’s no lie!

down the beach 
they strode, confident of finding
a morsel of lunch meat or taco
or anything worth minding

a man shooed them
away by throwing sand 
another lady closed her tote
when they wandered onto her bit of land

soon they were gone
covered by dense foliage
hoping us humans will 
leave just them some spoilage

© Draft, Carol Labuzzetta, 2025, All Rights Reserved.

Here is the photo from the day at Cinnamon Beach when we saw the feral donkeys.

Poetry Friday is being hosted this week by Jan at BookSeedStudio. Thanks for hosting, Jan!