100-day haiku challenge, no. 24

Light, measure the light.

Compose, aim, click, recompose.

Mummify in light.

100-day haiku challenge, no. 20

The fuchsia’s pink skirt

Has been polished by the rain.

I too am refreshed.

100-day haiku challenge, Day 10

The sun beats down hard,

avenging two days of rain.

Whose side should I take?

100-day haiku challenge, Day 1

The season is here.
Jacarandas the poet,
and I the reader.

Rebirth after a medical procedure

Rebirth after a medical procedure

‘We are not born all at once, but by bits’. (Mary Antin)

The child comes out of sedation

Tottering like a new-born calf.

In this new world the air is gel

And her spine is water.

She drawls on ‘mummy’,

attempts to say, don’t leave me.

Because you left her earlier

in the hands of strange men in white coats;

all by herself in an unfamiliar room

where machines flickered and droned.

She remembers, she remembers,

and looks at you to say, you betrayed me.

You abandoned me to the machines.

She is being born into un-speckled light.

You watch as she lifts an eyelid, a finger.

She tries to sit and flops like a worm.

You catch her before her body thinks the thought.

Old neural pathways are re-fired.

Mother reflexes dulled by time

reawaken with alacrity.

She comes into wakefulness like a transitional species:

part arthropod and part vertebrate,

bendy at strange angles.

Slowly, slowly, she evolves a spinal chord

Slowly, slowly, she grows a tongue

Speech emerges.

‘Mummy’, she says without slurring,

‘Take me home’.

A whole sentence running like a brook;

no, a holy river drowning you with relief.

You wheelchair her to the car.

And it feels like you have been back

from the rivers of Babylon.

You could not sing then.

But now you whistle through hospital corridors

like a pirate on a seized ship.

She is your catch, your prize.

She is a legend.

Un-forsaking with a poem from Hargeysa

Dear Blog,

It has been far too long. Let's not count the months or list the reasons why. The important thing is that I am back. The poem below is part of a body of work reflecting on experiences and relationships in Somaliland. 

Cadriyad

This is the story of how a meal becomes a journey.

This story marks the beginning of a new hunger

to feed on journeys and words accompanying them

The first time I saw Hodan’s baby boy

she served me sweetened vermicelli

while we waited for him to awake.

The breeze whispered in the soft light.

The snack had hints of cardamom and anise.

It sat on my tongue with hesitation.

I embraced its taste slowly.

It journeyed into my heart, and I

journeyed into my friend’s life:

She told me about fleeing Mogadishu

fearing for her little brother, tasting fear,

smelling blood; big empty nights, tears.

Depending on the generosity of strangers

Her father died.

She was only nine.

I walked with her through Lower Shabelle

Galkacyo, and on to Hargeisa.

Before we sat together that day,

eating Somali sweets,

I could not have imagined the wounds she doesn’t show;

the scars she tends in silence.

The baby awoke. We admired

His fat cheeks, his chubby legs.

He is a joharad; a son of Somaliland.

Hodan told me about the night

she saw the snake’s green stone.

I didn’t  believe the story of Joharad;

yet I do believe.

I believe it walks the sandy streets of Hargeisa;

It is in camel herders in the plains,

Sheep keepers in Sheikh

Poets and dancers.

It is in mothers putting their children to sleep

And friends sharing a meal.

I believe in this sweetness discovered on a sleepy

afternoon in Hargeisa.