"It's a very private thing for me," said Mr. Robert Fernandes, head of the security arm of perhaps one of the oldest shipping firms here: John Fernandes Limited.

It's also a hobby he's just recently acquired. As recent as 1994, he told the Sunday Chronicle in a snap interview late Wednesday evening.

And it's only because a close friend, who knows of this poetic streak of his, encouraged him to check out the weekly Tuesday night poetry sessions at the Upscale Guyana Restaurant in the heart of the city, that his little well-guarded secret is not so secret any more.

This was never more evident than in the huge turnout he had last Saturday night for the launching, in conjunction with the management of the Upscale Restaurant, of 'A Celebration of Guyana', a three-week exhibition of some of his finest photographic works.

The brainchild of both Fernandes and Upscale's Managing Director, Mr. Asafa George, it was felt that with the aid of a few select pieces of poetry - like Buxtonian Gerald Hope's stirring 'Ah right heah me born' and his contributions, most of which are either patriotic or pastoral in nature - an event such as this would help unite our six ethnic races and bring about healing in this troubled land of ours.

With the well-practised skill of a griot, he took his captive audience right along with him, beginning with a short piece entitled 'Patterns', through which he attempts to show the symmetry between poetry and nature.

Poetry is to nature, as nature is to poetry, he said. So inseparable are the two, he contends, that, throughout the years, the great poets have always tended to borrow images from nature to help them describe such abstract themes as love, beauty and strength.

But this is not a one-way affair, he cautions, as it is to poetry that they invariably turn when they want to do justice to those aspects of nature that are too breath-taking for words.

"The really breath-taking aspects of nature can only be properly described by poetry," he said.

His second piece, 'The Gift', dealt with an issue that is rather close to his heart; the issue of patrimony and patriotism.

"We all like to receive gifts and presents," he said. "We can't wait to tear them open to see what's inside."

Except when it comes to Guyana. "As Guyanese," he said, "we received our Dear Land of Guyana as a gift at birth; but nobody seems to be too excited about tearing it open and seeing what it is that we really got."

Little snippets about Guyana's lush rainforest, which we coastlanders like to refer to as "the bush; a place with snake 'n tiger 'n mosquito 'n malaria, when in fact it is quite the opposite," preceded a piece that was predictably entitled: 'The Rainforest'...

- A sensual feast laid out before us
Winds whispering poems to the tree tops
Leaves of living lace black against the sky
A shifting mosaic of sunlight and shadow in
Perpetual twilight and the green smell of growth. -

This particular poem, he said, was the product of many fascinating visits to the rainforest over the years which led him to gradually come to appreciate its living beauty.

Next came 'The Jaguar', an animal he likes to think of as "the undisputed monarch of" some of the most amazing animals to be found in the great Amazon River Basin, of which Guyana is geographically a part.

"To see a jaguar in the wild," he said, "is an experience you will never forget; something that will make your pores raise up."

'Whispering Land' was dedicated to what he called the other great natural region of Guyana, namely the Rupununi Savannahs, a place that was in total contrast with the rainforest; "a land of whispering beauty, where life is laid-back and where we get a chance to sit and wonder why, [and] where danger is just a gentle rattle coiled and waiting for us to pass."