Love Africa - on Book SA first

Love Africa

I am obsessed with grass that sings the screeching sun.

I am obsessed with morning’s dry sand that asks yet not receives, with noons refract, dusk that polluted cracks. I am obsessed with malnourished trees, roots inverted to drink from sky,
both upturned alive.

I am obsessed with dry
love heaving upon a cloud. Then, when late clouds garner applause, when death upon the grave crowd roars, when lightning asphyxiates the air, my love she does care. She breathes cracked breath from dry soil and curls unfurl from ferns beneath,
She sighs and says please, please appease my hunger my thirst, this time better than the worst

flood upon my rutted thighs, water-widows washed of dust to wither wet and die
made-mud dense for my green to grow, with thick fingers push in tiny shoots to sow. For when my love is here, he comes from high afar, I do not want him to see the scars
cut but thick red mulch that into roots does run, where fruit pips spit seed to sun, leaves a dance of come, come, come,
here to me my Africa does call, Love Africa is to sing for nature’s law.


Kathryn White