PLENTY (EXCERPT)
When I was young and there were five of us,
all running riot to my mother’s quiet despair,
our old enamel tub, age-stained and pocked
upon its griffin claws, was never full.
Such plenty was too dear in our expanse of drought
where dams leaked dry and windmills stalled.
Like Mommy’s smile. Her lips stretched back
and anchored down, in anger at some fault –
of mine, I thought – not knowing then
it was a clasp to keep us all from chaos.
She saw it always, snapping locks and straps,
the spilling: sums and worries, shopping lists
for aspirin, porridge, petrol, bread.
MESSENGER (EXCERPT)
Russet and frost
roadside fox
surprised
to be sidelined so fast.
Stop press
on the early news
he was delivering
tip-toeing across tar –
Abuja, Tripoli,
Hurricane Irene,
and the sky’s
new supernova –
Now his ankles
are delicately crossed
A PART OF ME IS GONE (EXCERPT)
It’s not just twins, identical,
who feel this way
(thinking as one),
same-egged, conjoined,
deep life-long linked
till hit and run –
or old age in my case:
not twinned, but fathered,
equally bereft.
