A Poem...on the back of the previous (observation.)
Refugee
Africa's winter sun strokes my cheek with her bloody fingers,
and makes my hair shine blue as her coals. This morning
there is fire in her colding kiss as she parts
and then heats my pale white knees,
now bared for her embrace - so pale from safekeeping
in these cold days of her savage grace.
In this sheltered place beneath the dip of a dryleafed branch,
the smell of her dust at my feet fills my eyes, and
blurs my head, and a train grumbles
through the hills behind me, and makes a throb
of her tunnels and tracks. Far-off a big dog barks, a
voice alone in the buzz of fly. Children sing from somewhere
- full of sound low and sweet, their voices a scar in this light
as they mold their small, dark feet into this red, dry earth,
sounding her heartbeat to the thrum of a slow skin drum,
and the smoke from my cigarette curls in wisps
around my fingers, and roars, silver from my nose and lips,
like the breath of the dragons who live, and breed, in her passes and caverns.
Will I miss her heart and her beat when I fly from her - headlong?
Refugee from her blood and boil –
in the thrust of my fearful need,
cutting myself from her,
knowing her as I bleed.
*written before leaving South Africa. For the last time.
** The title "Refugee" is intended to fulfill the sense of loss in leaving one's home and country. It is not literal in our case. We are not considered refugees in this country.
*** An interesting article on the status of refugees.