Still More from Africa

2/20/10- Durban, South Africa

Last night I had a vision

that your love hung low like the heavens

and your roots were growing through my soil,

turning it, tilling me.

3/7/10- Windhoek, Namibia

I am Emily Dickinson. And if she were indeed right that the mind is an ocean, then I should drown and never be bored. Yet I am counting down the days until I can be with the ones I love, and I am hoping that until then, my mind will be enough. How horrible it would be not to have a memory! Mine keeps me going, day by day, and reminds me how good life can be. And though human nature baffles me, and I am all the while losing faith in people, I recall those good souls who know how to love, and spill mine out onto papers and notes to mail their way.

Some from Africa

So I found some old poems in my journal from Africa, and wondered why I hadn't put them up anywhere. Well, here they are:

3/11/10- Khorixas/Swakopmund, Namibia

Oh, lachrymosa! The tears fall

like that hard and steady

rain on the tin roof.

I live in the lighthouse

with dust and grey, by day

I sit, ship-searching

and wondering

what the waves have to say.

Fog covers ocean,

clouds hide sky,

sand claims the tide...

Oceanside people play,

sway in the ebb and flow,

wandering with ancient questions

that linger with the ocean's spray.

I will never join them in the bay.

I nightly leave my post when the world is mine,

and the stars shine and revive me with their lonely light.

The birds bring news,

crying notes of foreign seas

and making sad those

on whose ears fall

tales of suffering they've seen.