One time, after he had killed my neighbor and chased the screaming women and children towards the river, a soldier sat under a small tree behind my kitchen and smoked a cigarette.

His brothers were retracting back across the dry flood plain, Ak-47s now slightly relaxed, a few isolated war cries still whooping across the paralyzed air.

But this soldier’s gun lay at the foot of the tree, discarded alongside the leaking yellow jerry cans and pink headscarves that littered the dirt path running South.  

He lurched like a drunk when he dropped it, staggering a slow full circle with head raised heavenward and long empty arms twitching loosely at his sides.

From the cement horizon of the porch half-wall where I hid, I saw him slump to the ground by the small tree and I was certain he was injured, bleeding out from a wound I could not see.

But I watched as his comrades filed slowly past, ignoring him as they ignored me, moving back towards the camp with casual rage.

Black smoke bruised the sky above the airstrip as the tall soldier pulled a pack from the breast pocket of his uniform. Like a man on a mat outside the market, he cupped his hands near his face as he lit up. Then sagging back against the tree he sucked in over and over again with deep hungry breaths.

Twilight eventually gathered herself up out of the haze and slipped discreetly home. I returned to my family on the floor inside. Later, when I came back out to draw water from the barrel, he was gone.   

I think about that soldier today as I cook supper for my children. From where I stand at the half wall stirring lentils I can see the small tree where he sat one afternoon a few years ago. It rises above the chai colored flood waters rippling over the field, sunlight shattering brightly against its wet shade. Hot oil pops against the skin of my wrist as I watch the tree and listen to the splash and cry of swimming children.

To be fair, they didn’t promise

    the chimpanzees,

and bush elephant sightings

     weren’t even in the brochure.

But the tremor in the trees

    and trace of manure

drew us into the forest like vagabonds

    trailing the lure of incense

through an unattended cathedral door.

. 

Haze of winged things and spores

spin in the light filtered

    through stain glass canopy,

panoply of ficus and epiphyte

ribboning the roof with a

    cacophony of texture,

symbolizing rites we know little of.

.

A choir of turacos haunts balconies above

as we tiptoe down staircases

    of writhing roots,

palms grazing fig columns in moss suits woven

    with a green yet nameless.

And just ahead, finger-broken bread fruit

    crushed on the mud,

excess of the morning’s Eucharist.

.

If not for our guide we might have missed

the significance of the staggered pools

where last night leathery feet pressed

    deep in the cool earth.

This morning water blinks back sky,

reflected baptistery of ashen toadstool,

    citrine butterfly and red black-pepper berry.

.

Following the river tributary

through this labyrinth of prayer  

we emerge in a bare maize field

blinded again by the world of ordinary light.  

Our pockets full of crumbs snatched

    from under the children’s table,

we begin the walk home, if not healed,

blessed.

It seems to me that

the art of poetry

is much like

the art of sex.

.

Inspiration favors those who faithfully fill notebooks

   with so many scrawled lines,

late-night-pages sated with threadbare simile,

our metaphors as familiar to each other now as

   nursery rhymes –

agreeable in their predictability.

.

Every once in a while –

      (anniversary poems usually)

   –  the imagery slinks uneasily towards melodrama,

ill-fitting verse slipped straight from the thesaurus

   and massaged clumsily into meter,

Arguably impressive in form

   but making for vaguely awkward reading.

.

And those ambling streams of consciousness   

   cursiving tipsily from couch to bed,

stepping over the pencil notes strewn everywhere –

   stars and question marks,

   lines under and lines through,

–  mess of the day’s annotations twining around

   the body of the text.

.

There they are now,

all those mismatched volumes  

   we’ve collected over the years,

thousands of unremarkable lines

   resting solidly on the bedroom shelf.

.

Yet even from over here at my desk,

   I can see the dog-ears,

the fringes of old receipts and sticky notes

   marking favorite passages.

Those ones where the words shoved us up against

   the guest bedroom wall while the kids were napping,

shocking us with a poem so raw

   we spent the rest of the day dizzy

from the secret thing we had written.

When we breathe only dust

under a sky that is bleached bone white,

.

when the ground is cracked open

like the heel of an old woman’s foot,

.

when in our collective memory,

water from heaven has begun to smell

faintly of mythology,

.

like the stories old men weave

along familiar patterns late at night,

Tin Dune up on Mount Watke

mixing language up in her stone pots.

.

Then,

.

the soft clatter of wet footsteps on a tin roof at midnight

is a shocking spiritual omen,

a forgotten promise remembered.

.

It is something from another world

brushing up lightly against the silky veil between realities

and pausing briefly before passing on by.

Today we trimmed the Mango Pine

   at the request of a new neighbor who

needs a bit more sunlight in the

   lower left corner of his yard.

There he has planted tomatoes and sukuma,

   thirsty rows between the legs

of the banana family clustered at the fence,

   watching us while we swing.

.

The man hired to do the work carries his panga

   with lazy confidence,

the way my children wield their stick swords

   and cardboard battle axes.

He shimmies up the tree, gripping muscled limbs

   with bare thighs

and I feel a pang of strange envy

   as he grazes past places I have regarded

almost every day that we have lived in this house

   but have never touched.

.

The branches fall quietly under

   strong, neat blows,

mottled brown skin exposing

   white pulp bone,

a clean crack and rush of dark green

   lowering itself down to the ground gently.

The sky beyond the tree is now

   so suddenly naked,

rain rinsed blue pushing through bare branches

  quite pleased, I think, with the shock of itself.

.

The teasing detritus that used to wash up

   on this shade-soaked shore –

slim striped feather,

yellow threaded leaf,

waxy black pod –

now litters this corner of the compound

   like the contents of a cave.

.

My pirate daughters raid this newly upside-down world

   once kept only for drongos and mousebirds,

pilfering with exquisite care a filigree nest,

   empty and perfect,

tracing the calligraphy of ant highways scrawled across

   fallen temple beams,

and amassing armfuls of leaves

   into pyres bigger than themselves,

each one dry and smooth

   like a million dollar bills.

From the heart of this sunlit cemetery

I can hear my sister crying at the stone.

Beneath her rests the body she knows like her own,

bones of certainty now broken,

muscle and veins wrapped in liturgy laced skin,

all pulled from her grasp in a single slow-motion

   fire of a Friday.

.

We came this morning to see what keepsakes

might still lie on the path,

emblems to treasure in shallow ceramic dishes by our bed.

There is assurance in these fragments,

lovely and quiet, easy to frame,

unlikely to cut as deeply as the sharp edges

   of resurrection.

.

But the grave-grass reveals nothing more

than a few fallen seeds and my wound reopens.

I weep as I pour the perfume to earth,

small homage to the shadow I have loved so well.

I sing out this devastating freedom

   my hands open and empty.

.

The groundskeeper is a stranger to me.

And yet he calls my name in a voice I have always known.   

Hi friends. It’s been a while since I have done this…written publicly that is. I’m still not completely sure what all will make its way here into this space to be read or who may stumble into this space to read.

But in a world that finds itself increasingly disconnected – or perhaps more accurately, in a world where I find myself feeling increasingly fragmented, I am hoping this will be a place that truest parts of me and the truest parts of this world that have gifted themselves to me will somehow turn up together.

And hopefully, it will be a place where maybe you can feel connected too.