The handsome young man handed me a bottle of Ting, Jamaica’s popular grapefruit soda, and said with a mischievous smile, “This is where Stella got her groove back.”

Oh really. Well, my groove is fine, thank you.

I had flown to the island on assignment. My task: Write a travel story about the Calabash Literary Festival for my editor. I also hoped to write a poem for myself, since I’d be in the land of sun and sand, where the ocean looks like a thousand green gems, each a slightly different hue.

But poetry can be elusive. It tends to hide if you seek it.

“Yeah, man” quickly became “no, ma'am,” despite the striking things I saw – the rugged coast, the threadbare chickens walking along the edge of the highway, the stubborn little donkey standing in the middle of the road, as if it owned the whole country.

The problem, I realized, was that I was overloaded with imagery, and images without context or meaning are worthless. A poem results from a sudden “awakening of attention,” as W.S. Merwin says in the latest issue of Poets & Writers.

Part of what I needed had come, oddly enough, my first day there, when Jake’s (the resort that hosts Calabash) hired a boat to take some of the featured writers down the coast, to the Pelican Bar, and then up the Black River. I was invited to go along.

The boat could definitely rock and roll – especially if two people tried to board at once. There were no cushions and no cover. Amina Baraka, wife of the poet Amiri, wasn’t sure she wanted to get in.

But she did, and she and Amiri sat toward the back of the boat. I shared the last bench with novelist Colin Channer, one of the festival’s founders.

Colin is a warm, welcoming man, with a big voice and an easy laugh. As we rode along past resorts and then open stretches of beach, he chuckled each time Amina squealed about a large wave. The grin on his face never seemed to fade as he looked at the people in the boat – including novelist Russell Banks and poet Roger Bonair-Agard – or toward the island and then the open water.

His look was so serene and appreciative, I finally had to ask: “What are you thinking about?”

He looked out toward the waves and said, “I’m thinking about the 50 things I need to do when I get back.” The festival would begin that night.

And then he added, in a softer voice, “I’m also thinking about the rhythm of those hills,” he said, pointing. “They’re so musical.”

Wow.

A few minutes later he pointed toward the hills again, saying they looked “like a trumpet solo.”

I tried looking at things as intently as Colin did. The Pelican Bar, our first destination, was a hut on stilts, on a sandbar half a mile offshore. The “stairs” were made of tree limbs. And the “bar” consisted of a cooler full of bottled drinks, including Ting, my new favorite.

I tried to take in every detail, admiring the crafts that a man named Joseph had for sale on the floor of the hut. He’d painted shells and carved bird houses from gourds. But I didn’t notice as much as Colin did.

When we got back into the boat, he said, “Look in your pocket.”

In my pocket? Why?

I searched my jacket twice before I found the piece of coral Joseph had slipped in as a gift.

As we headed to the Black River, several miles away, I asked Colin if he was surprised that the festival, now in its fifth year, had become so successful, drawing people from all around Jamaica and the world.

No, he said, people “needed it, they just didn’t know they did.”

Talk about foresight – or faith. Whatever you call it, the man clearly has vision, which is very different from sight. One is the ability to notice details, the other to understand them. When they come together, a poem (or a novel) sings.

What I didn’t realize until later, though, is that Colin was nearly blind until a few years ago. He credits skilled surgeons for restoring what little sight he has.

That unlikely juxtaposition was exactly the kind of inspiration I’d been hoping to find.