Umemulo

Night sounds coming and going here like breath,

while the hot dark encompasses me, strange, oblivious.

A Zulu woman’s voice sounds out across the valley,

to key-board notes that seep into consciousness, like rain.

This city’s water is in my bones.

Its earth was not my cradle,

but its sun has scorched stories

across my pale skin, burning a belonging.

Durban, you are a girl turned twenty-one, baring your breasts

for ‘umemulo,’* as others pin money to your beaded hat.

You are her later that day, sheathed in satin,

sipping birthday champagne in a marquee.

In Africa we love each other.

Our frangipani words stay the air with sweetness.

Home is where the heart reaches,

my song for you is starting, listen.

* Coming of Age ceremony (Zulu)

Day

The day, a mango,

sheds its skin

and orange light snakes through the wild ginger leaves.

I want to take your loneliness from you

Let your body dip into mine

as if I were the sea, and you the swimmer.

See how the clouds are dancing.

Seeded with shadows,

they are ready to break open with love.

And the day sings.

In her shoes

We traveled by taxi into a city

caught in a frayed net of light.

I a girl in grown up’s shoes,

ready to take the world, remake it.

My mother was selling me the house she built, for half-price.

Her eyes sad, she told me she was glad for me.

This gift the biggest of so many, while an ocean of morning air

washed through us, tides of years gone by, and not returning.

Time, a child, tugged at my hand,

pulling me back, as still we moved forward,

across the road to the lawyer’s, the green man flashing

and the cars that stopped to let us walk.

17.3.10

Moore Road

There are parallel worlds to this one. Driving,

I view Durban sun rising up the ridge from over the sea,

like a bright garment put on for the day,

and the air already liquid with heat.

Memory is a glittering fish

darting through the shallows.

When I was small, the world was magic, green,

impossibly full of light, longing.

The limit of adulthood lifts at times,

like scales found on the eyes of snakes,

transparent, allowing a vision

of all you thought you’d lost.

Like now, the viewed city gleaming, a rough pearl

asymmetrical, opalescent, what it is,

and not smoothed to fit a mould.

Set it on a silver ring, I’ll wear it.