The Road To
Our words frame nothing—the salt pan’s moon-white edge dissolves mophane trees furred with caterpillars still unroasted, still pulsing through deep green, and palms, armed and tattered windmills. Vulnerable as skin, the tires racing over dirt, sand, jutting teeth of rock. For hours wind holds our voices from the truck’s open bed. When the road gives completely in to sand, we waver, go weightless—ostriches unfurl from the bush, wild dogs’ ears go tall blue with twilight. Helmeted guineafowl stipple the uncertain light we steer into, braking to scramble for the dying bounty, every body a meal. The sand churns. Women mouth nice meat, and the long trail of elephant goes from gray mountain broken to boulders to boulder broken to stones, a stone to its many grains of smoky silver dust. It takes deep sand, stalled speed to see them there on cold embers—dark as collapsed stars, the iron pots, the emptied evening. It isn’t a question of. The Southern Cross not a cross, an X, a crucifix, but a kite’s rising corners. Four bone flashes, nothing inside but how you see the night. Our voices dust the country. There are no right words in this wind, in its deep collapse. They say the skeleton holds the body inside. That dust makes up the stone. That one is one, divided, multiplied, enough.
We say nothing as night tilts from its shell, the Milky Way
smoking across
From Nomadic Foundations (2002). First published in Reed Magazine.
Our words frame nothing—the salt pan’s moon-white edge dissolves mophane trees furred with caterpillars still unroasted, still pulsing through deep green, and palms, armed and tattered windmills. Vulnerable as skin, the tires racing over dirt, sand, jutting teeth of rock. For hours wind holds our voices from the truck’s open bed. When the road gives completely in to sand, we waver, go weightless—ostriches unfurl from the bush, wild dogs’ ears go tall blue with twilight. Helmeted guineafowl stipple the uncertain light we steer into, braking to scramble for the dying bounty, every body a meal. The sand churns. Women mouth nice meat, and the long trail of elephant goes from gray mountain broken to boulders to boulder broken to stones, a stone to its many grains of smoky silver dust. It takes deep sand, stalled speed to see them there on cold embers—dark as collapsed stars, the iron pots, the emptied evening. It isn’t a question of. The Southern Cross not a cross, an X, a crucifix, but a kite’s rising corners. Four bone flashes, nothing inside but how you see the night. Our voices dust the country. There are no right words in this wind, in its deep collapse. They say the skeleton holds the body inside. That dust makes up the stone. That one is one, divided, multiplied, enough.
We say nothing as night tilts from its shell, the Milky Way
smoking across
From Nomadic Foundations (2002). First published in Reed Magazine.