Train coming around the tracks

The silence was the most disturbing part. The whole world standing staring at these metal sinews tripped and quick-frozen. Now with summer at its heaviest, the air burning with the ingratitude of August and the back-and-forthing of combines. There’s been much hail — we’ve huddled tsk-tsking, watching the sky like a felon. What did we…

Heavy Rain off the Eaves

One man’s voice, a cat at home curled up on the paper and a phone bill overdue. Him, his voice, suddenly there, like a reflection in glass, a hand on your shoulder, and the wind is inside me, in the cage of my chest, swelling.   One man’s voice. No greater than another’s. And perfect…

Frothing Milk

Sun on skin, we lizard in this clearing, two cups of coffee and an orange between us. It’s something I read once, that love is sharing an orange, and so we do, popping the sections into our mouths, into the dark places between words. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN

Dawn chorus of crows

The waking hour. Silver light through the trees and a high moan of boxcars dopplering. The house asleep. The baby breathing. Fear at my throat. Or at least loss, for tempus fugit: that old chestnut. Perhaps we could Peter Pan, forever moving west. Or maybe, as the poet said, west is Everywhere. A verb: we…

4-week baby nursing

It all comes down to this he said, Curious. That it all should come down. That it, in its sprawling it-ness, could, or would ever be, felled. The whole shebang. The whole enchilada. Kaput.   Perhaps he meant this: the wide world shrunk to one room where everything that matters is this man, sleeping, his…

Zululand funeral

The valley walks this morning, hulking cowflesh lumbering toward water. Glossy coats twitching, and egrets busy with the earth at their feet.   Another man lost to the virus today, his song echoing in our chests. And still there is a boy, his brother, his dog, a whip. And the road that leads us home.…

Durban Natural History Museum

Your voice, swaddled in tweed, and a map of the world where the sun never sets on Mum, not to mention her roses. Her cotton gloves. Her Columbus. These dead birds a siren for the likes of us, hunting Darwin, his shadow growing still. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN