April in Bulawayo
April is the coolest month breeding tooth-
picks out of the drying soil. Pearly love
grass works a treat. Odour of khaki weed
mingles, in the early chilly mornings,
with lantana, wood smoke, and smouldering
batteries. The fruit of Lobengula’s
indaba tree is about to ripen.
Yellow flowers now give way to the red:
aloe arborescence, poinsettia,
the potted bougainvillea that Joe
tried to bonsai. Nights are getting nippy,
time for an extra blanket, and bed socks,
but – O – the lightly toasted afternoons –
listen to that boubou shrike – are perfect.
Potato Bush
Boiled potatoes in their jackets is what
I think I smell. Mom is in the kitchen,
cowboy book with a cracked spine in one hand,
testing fork in the other; cigarette –
Springbok – between her lips. ‘What’s for supper,
Mom?’ ‘S and S,’ she says, narrowing her
eyes to avoid the smoke. S and S – a
code we children could not crack, though we sensed
it meant ‘whatever’.
But I am wandering down a river bed
dry as wrinkles, a month before the rains;
a bed of carapaces and driftwood,
a long season from my mother’s kitchen;
and it’s evening, and I know it now:
aartappelbos. It came to me once at
Punda Maria, once at Colleen Bawn,
once at West Nicholson. And I linger,
briefly overcome.
September
Nature is an impressionist in my
part of town, especially now when light
choked with dust and pollen and garbage smoke
permeates cry after cry of lost bush
birds. Vesper bats stroke the palpitating
moon about to run is yolk, while crickets,
rain frogs, tune up for the Bulawayo
proms. It’s all sepia, tobacco, burnt
orange, sienna… restless is the word,
September restlessness; New Year babies
pushed from Virgo’s knock-kneed thighs. Starry thighs
purpler than priests, than stains of inky wine.
Starry, starry impressionistic night –
take me to your bosom and hold me tight.