Africa (i have seen the dew drops fall....
Mina Laksh
11 October 2007, 13:30
I have not seen the dew drops fall for sometime now, nor have I been able to smell the musk off those special cats in the night. They say, here in Africa ‘they prowl in the night so fierce that if they get a fit they bite!’
But then,
I may even confess that I have not seen any.
All I really see is the dull sky above; as I sit here on this bench in the silent playhouse they call a park.
And sitting on this bench I begin to wait for that stray musky cat, the dew to slip out off some leaf onto my open palms, perhaps.
And then,
not far off from this thin span I look up to count what we call stars.
That what I find, instead,
is a blink from a craft… a helicopter that past above, doing its nightly rounds.
Out away from us;
out away into the night;
out onto the oceans that separate me from the fish that may be ducking into the blue green murky waters of the Atlantic.
And
the cat that never prowled
and
the drop that might appear when dawn opens her arms through the maze of thick bushes and leaves. Sometimes to moisten my face.
Africa is beautiful. West Africa is one.
And the entire glimpse that now fades into a soul is like a butterscotch dream.
A mixture of two:
brown and white not darkly tanned. But just tanned.
Walking into the thicket of source the mother waddles with child on her hip.
She sways and hums a little tune.
Not thinking that the cars that whiz past might hit her.
They whiz.
Not a care to speed.
The Peugeot, the BMW and now this Lexus.
She turns at him and curses, “God! don punish you. You mad man!” she is upset.
That fleeting spin which lost her sway, from where tumbled out oranges,
out onto the street.
Tumbled like small round balls onto a billiard table.
She picks them unnoticed.
Places them upon that head that always took its “load” her basket of tomorrow’s worries.
Africa you breathe…
