Tag: South Africa

poetry

in the bird hide

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in the bird hide

in the bird hide
everything is simple
all we’re invited to do
is be:
come look notice appreciate praise

avocado green water laps
against deep brown stilts
a fresh breeze filters in
ruffles the novel pages
and scatters the Coke cans
nyala, impala sidle down to sip
and our eyelids droop
while nothing much transpires

until all in a moment
two wooly-necked storks
descend with a clatter
throw rainbows our way
then remind us
what love looks like –
gently plucking parasites
from the beloved’s trusting neck

poetry

Marco Polo

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Marco Polo

in the blue cold of pool
we split his name in half
echo discovery
find innocent contact
bubbling with laughter
even as we’re trapped

poetry

one month in

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one month in

one month in
Cedar arranges his pilfered blanket then states that’s sorted
Owen eats any dried meat he can
both boys down tea and fizzies
we know how long a kilometer feels
I give up on Owen wearing shorts or Cedar wearing trousers
we know crisps vs. chips without having to think
an African choir and yowling hyenas serenade us to sleep
we’re a little less American
and a bit more worldly

poetry

orange grove

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orange grove

behind a screen of feathery firs
neat rows of short green trees
preceded for miles
by the dripping sweet scent
of orange blossoms
so thick and heady
I can barely gulp down air

it’s the same citrus smell
your warm crown wore
after the tangerine baby wash
in the sweet simple days
before your first haircut

poetry

Drakensberg

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Drakensberg

after days and days
of endless horizon,
mountains &
relief

poetry

smog

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smog

here’s a new kind of pink sky
in mid-day
tinged with brown
laced with black plumes of smoke
curved beakers of nuclear power
newly wired townships strung with black web
people crowding around
to make themselves sick
then pack a pickup bed high
before moving on

poetry

dark days in South Africa

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The Serowe Museum has an exhibit on writer Bessie Head. She was born in South Africa to a white mother and black father, which was illegal. Our guide said it was lucky that the authorities hadn’t broken her neck. I had not heard of mixed race children being killed under apartheid, and I asked our main guide if that was true, which he confirmed. I wrote this poem reflecting on that. Now that we’re back in wifi, I have been Googling a bit and have not been able to substantiate that. Here is an account of what it was like to be an illegal mixed race child under apartheid, though. Trevor Noah’s autobiography, Born a Crime, also addresses this.

dark days in South Africa

there was a time
when black + white
equaled a little wrung neck
born babies accorded
no right to be
by some misguided man
dead sure of his
righteousness
stealing little whispers of breath
all to keep the world
less colored