For tomorrow and the days after.

A thin thread o’ fear been tightening ‘round town since election date announce.

Veggie vendor tell me in pure Creolese, Me nah wha’ go happen to ahbee. I don’t know what will happen to us.

What gon happen if the government party win and some people who don’t like the result take to protesting, beating up citizens, burning shops, looting and so on and so forth.

In front of the bank on Wedneday morning, I talk to the nun, the deputy head-mistress of me ol’ high-school. She is frail now, like paper in the wind.  She look more white than she used to be, and the bright is gone from she blue eyes. She ‘Merican twang is still sharp and young, though age erode the edges.

“I hope nothing happens,” she say. “Pray, we must pray,” she say. “We are having a prayer vigil on Friday night.”

My friends from foreign places tell me that they’s terrified. They look at what happen in other countries, where people from their homeland get injured.  They been getting advice from bosses on how to stay safe.

Suddenly, it dawn on me that I ain’t scared.

“Nothing bad is going to happen,” I tell one friend.

“How do you know?” she ask.

“Because the people who used to promote the violence are now sick or getting sick; others have one leg in life and the next leg in the grave, and others are dead. Besides, the young people of this country are just not into that sort of behaviour.”

“How do you know,” she ask again.

“They are way too cool and way too hip, and they’re friends with each other, lots of intermarrying going on now. They don’t have time for that sort of nonsense. And look at the political parties today. All mixed up racially. Besides, our last elections was so peaceful, not a sign of trouble.”

I say all this knowing that I can be wrong. But I say it with hope, with that Peace Train song running in me head, with this Rabindranath Tagore prayer in me heart:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.