Your African Fold
The sunrise in your gray eyes speaks
the history of man with no words.
Silence spirals across the sky.
This nautiloid look from the inside.
Wrapped in saugins and duvet
with eyes wide tight against the sounds
outside, trembling at your footsteps
in the dawn moonlight. Africa,
I miss your naked eye
nebula, your pale chanting evenings,
the truth in your false cross.
I can still see the baboon stare
of your gravel highway I drove down
to fata morgana herself,
her moist finger motioning me to jump
from the cliffs of my unspoken east.
I can still hear the what what of your
quick click chit chat this that and the other,
tell me another story so hard from the start,
so far from home, sleeves on the heart.
The tragedy of the easy tip,
the comedy of the kitchen lip,
the opera of the landy stuck in the sandy
and old jack hiboy only knows one way to go.
Pull the damned thing out, sounds
Mr. Basso Profundo, unair these tires man,
get thee out of this godforsaken land.
Godforsaken? I don’t think so.
Why here He comes just now, walking
through the shadow of a quiver tree,
out across the gravel plain.
Walking on one leg with one arm and one eye
that can still find the road ahead. Africa,
I’ll sail through your lagoon anytime.
I’ll paint butterflies in your sand all night long.
I’ll lay by your side as you die before your time.
I’ll see you rise again with Mimosa.
Mimosa, I can still feel the bowl of your soft dark
belly
hanging above me every night. Tucking me in,
rolling me over and over until I’ve been rolled
into the arms of your African fold.
