Wo(a)nderings …
1.
Deep in the earth,
A seed sings its birthsong,
Soft and terrible.
______________________
The ground above
Bears the imprint
Of your hand.
2.
When did I become voiceless,
Lose my tongue?
Hunger that
pecks at my heart,
gnaws on my bones -
When did I surrender to its tyranny?
3.
It mocks me,
This longing …
Its martyred eyes
and stillborn howl.
Everywhere I go -
A nimbus of desire.
Every word I speak -
An Ave Maria of sighs.
I am lost in this city of barking dogs
And battened doors.
I walk alone
Looking for your house,
Hoping you will welcome me
With a smile.
Writer’s block
i am afraid
that my nets will bring nothing back but bones …
i am afraid
that the rose will wither at my touch …
i am afraid
that my soul has dwindled to shadow …
i am afraid to write.
Waiting in the hotel lobby
Petrified.
The cold rattles my heart’s hinges,
leaves my fingers numb.
He will not come,
He will not come.
I will have to leave.
I will have to stand,
solitary,
in the frozen elegance of this room,
and leave,
shame wrapped round me
like a bloodstained sheet.
The Falcon
It chokes me
so that I cannot breathe -
this longing for open sky and joyous wings.
It rises,
flows into my words -
a gurgle here,
a trickle there.
Soon,
a lake surrounds me,
cool and clear.
And in its depths,
mirror of my desire,
a falcon flies,
wingtips brushing the sun.
For Spunky
The tug of a wanton leash,
the impatient jerk as I close the gate,
a kiskadee calling up in the blue,
the Indian man at the corner
cussing his dogs for raising a racket,
envious of this freedom,
this exquisite revelry
in grass
and dust
and sunlight –
These haunt me like a limb removed,
an unforgiven sin that creeps into my bed at night.
“He won’t let us sleep,” my mother said,
her voice grown faint over the distance.
“He howls every night since you left.”
And so it was
that when I called at the gate
there was no answering yelp,
no head shoved under my hand,
tail aquiver with happiness.
When I asked, they shrugged and said,
“He wouldn’t let us sleep.”
Jill Scott sings ‘Good Morning Heartache’
Woman voluptuous,
Tall in her negritude,
Belts out worlds of sound,
Swirls of cocoa and molasses.
Her voice,
Loamy and laden with pain,
Heavy with the strain of centuries,
Floods the hall –
A Mississippi
Overflowing its banks,
Sweeping all away in its glory.
Woman voluptuous,
Tall in her negritude,
Wears a gardenia in her hair.
But as she sways,
Sashays,
Ebbs and flows,
She makes it clear:
There is no wilting here.
The Lady sings the blues –
Not the other way around.
The Dark
I know it worries you –
This darkness
Full of whispered secrets and tangled sheets.
But the light,
Sterile as a reptile’s stare,
Snags on edges and
Clatters down empty corridors.
It denies the softness in things:
Moist recesses and dark caves,
The sinuous certainty of a seed
Burrowing into bedrock,
The silence that,
On a flurry of wings,
Swallows a whimper
Whole.
I know it worries you –
This groping with clammy hands,
The bruised knuckles and dirty nails.
But someone must dig down,
Past the hubris and rotting leaves.
Someone must,
On bended knee,
Mourn the death of a star
And sing another into being.
