Lindi-Ann Hewitt-Coleman

fresh poetry

  • Imminence

    ,

    we knew it would rain

    waking almost morning
    opening the door
    stepping out half dark
    hoping for the last of night cool
    on my skin, but instead
    the world breathed warm
    alive with mist
    too close for stars

    we knew it would rain
    when day came and mist
    pulled thin across the sky
    until the sun singed
    the unravelling edges
    of the world and we
    waded through the morning heat
    water bucket, hay,
    ducklings to the pond –
    all of life seeking shelter
    and shade and cool
    until the doing was done
    and we could slip silent into forest
    among the quiet and dappling,
    among the unstirring leaves.

    we knew it would rain
    mid afternoon
    when the sky tilted a breeze
    ocean pushed and
    rushing through the valleys –
    opening doors and windows
    to let it rush through
    across warm wood –
    if not cooling then stirring at least.

    we knew it would rain

    early evening drinking tea
    at the long table watching
    the sky gather on the horizon –
    darken , clot
    purple and heavy and close –

    said quick before the rain
    and sat some more and finished our tea.

    by the time we put the beet on to soak
    the first drops were falling,
    evaporating on contact
    but falling falling

    now we rushed –

    my youngest and i
    alone for a bit,
    divvying up the tasks
    between us,
    calling goats in,
    hurrying mother hens and horses,
    covering bales.
    closing doors and gates
    under a sky that has now broken
    in two and is pouring rain –
    blessed rain in sheets thick and warm
    full in our faces –
    until drenched and drenched again

    we meet up mid rush
    only to laugh at the thunder crack sky
    and each other soaked skinless
    dripping hair plastered down our backs
    stuck to our cheeks
    entangled with petal and leaf.

    mud smeared feet stemming the flow
    of silt water ankle deep down the drive –
    pulling up stepping stones from rain gulleys
    with rain running rivulets down spines
    trying to shape the flow, guiding water
    away from the house to contour ponds
    and overflows and soak aways

    and all the while the rain that fell
    and falls and falls
    calls us to be here
    alive and bellowing skin prayers –
    our voices nothing to the song of frogs,
    the silence of wings
    and the rain that came
    that comes
    giving life.

    inside we strip off wet clothes for dry
    twist hair up in towels
    loud laugh mop floors and wring and mop again
    where our coming and going had created
    inadvertant floods

    make supper, chatter, eat
    blood flowing strong rivers in our veins
    the stream, become river, in the valley roaring too.

    night will come quiet
    with long soaking rain,
    gentle now
    like a sigh.

    Fir Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A COMMONS FOR ALL. Read more about it here.

    https://earthweal.com/2023/02/13/a-commons-for-all/

  • late work

    ,

    i want a home
    that is a hole
    in the ground
    cool clay walls
    frogskin soft
    to hide from heat
    and fire and loss –

    (are we losing
    our minds
    because we think
    all is
    already lost)

    i
    i want a home
    that is a hole
    in the ground
    but not a grave

    not a grave- i want want
    light and air to breathe
    and winter sun
    like a tree
    i want a
    i want

    #reloading #pause #wait
    #want #thinkingaboutthis
    #soforgetful
    #forgotten

    i dont know if we know
    what hot really is –
    sitting in the shade
    wilted leaves
    waiting
    for the heat to pass

    and oh god
    and gods and
    the writhing masses
    of living lived living –
    what are we going to do

    because of course
    and of course
    only our doing
    our living
    only our what the fuck
    are we doing
    can save us
    and of course what we are not
    doing (too/to)

    (shhhh shhh
    don’t look
    don’t notice
    don’t act.

    here it is shiny, new
    have it want it
    all the moving pictures
    laugh now
    this is all you need
    shhhhh)

    this morning i ate the plum
    leaning against the doorframe
    as i do, looking out
    at the billowing green growth
    clamouring leaning falling
    as it does in summer.

    ate the plum – home grown
    juices barely contained in its
    taut crimson skin –
    running down fingers and wrist,
    all of of us
    leaning billowing falling
    in summer.

    none of this is verifiable –
    phone out of charge
    out of reach of our
    other lived reality
    across platforms in this
    world within worlds
    virtually not here at all
    anymore – and if i was
    the tree that fell – and
    no one took the photo,
    posted , would i could
    i have fallen
    at all

    #treesofinstagram
    #stillhere #wherearewe
    #howdowelove

    6pm and the sky is still blue
    the sun still dries the washing on the line –
    we are sitting outside in the shade
    where it is cool, a toad falls
    lazily into the pond – surfaces
    its breath rippling dark water

    breathless
    the world turns
    and we
    alive in our skins
    turn with it turn with it
    turn

    #didithappen #werewehereallalong
    #howdowelive #alive

    late work is carrying water
    for the goats – weight resting
    in curl of fingers
    bucket in each hand
    cool where it bumps my leg

    it is is the sound of the gate latch
    catching – holding for the night
    while the goats sigh,
    loud chewing their hay.

    #theend #isitending
    #endtimes

    For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge:Late work with Jorie Graham. Read it here

    https://earthweal.com/2023/01/16/late-work-with-jorie-graham/

  • sustained

    ,

    almost summer now
    and days stretch, longer
    evenings gold and thick with
    life open like a window in time –

    sunstained by berries
    rasp and young, goose and straw
    i find myself, last light, in the garden
    with wattle and string in hand,
    scissors precarious in pocket,

    (and it is hard not to be in love here
    with this soil this place this earth
    with these gods of here
    whose names i have never known –
    gods who stir and sigh
    at the edge of our
    living and dying
    here
    it is hard not to be in love
    here)

    building trellis and temple
    for the tomatoes that grow
    elbow to finger tip by the day –
    for the purple beans that
    are reaching beyond their
    cross-weave poles into the guava
    and onto the shaggy sod-roof
    of the hen house,

    purple black sap pods
    hang in handfuls
    ready for the picking,
    firm sticks for jalapeno and brinjal
    while the sky seeps into the hill

    and as the toad stirs
    from its leaf home shallow dug
    under the chamomile
    for its night toading

    i say my thanks close the gate
    go inside to cook the beans
    chop the greens
    eat

    this always was
    this might always be
    this is

    For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: TENDING A DIFFICULT GARDEN

    https://earthweal.com/2022/11/21/tending-a-difficult-garden/

  • speaking with feral tongues

    ,

    speaking with feral tongues

    1.

    “earth my body
    water my blood”

    2.

    what songs are these
    that scald our lips
    and leave our tongues
    hot sand and grit numb
    in our mouths.

    what songs are these
    hissed in bellow anger
    that drives us beating
    beating palm to stretch skin
    under a silence of cleared sky
    where no sky had been seen
    before.

    songs of stump and limb
    and sever and ache.

    and when the tears come
    as come they will
    when the anger that burned
    is cooled by the rain.

    when the tears come
    and we sing the lament
    of every tree that fell –
    until there is no more
    in us left to sing

    who then will plant the trees –
    who then will have breath enough
    to sing the saplings to the sky.

    3.

    what shifts in the mind of man
    between seeing breathing
    recognising beauty and
    want lust greed – i must have it
    own it
    consume it.

    did they arrive here southern
    south coast of africa away
    away – so far away
    did they arrive here green jewel
    mist morning glittering lakes and
    trees and trees and trees,
    stand a moment among a choir
    of voices unheard and say
    how great is our god of the sky
    that he has made a world this beautiful –

    or were they afraid
    afraid of this thrumming wildness
    this green and loud with birdsong world –
    (tame it chain it own it)
    did he open his eyes on this strange shore
    and say mine mine all of it mine.

    did we see no more
    than a storehouse for plundering –
    selling the wealth of the world
    limb by limb on boats across the ocean.
    selling our earth and our future.

    4.

    “earth my body,
    water my blood”

    5.

    this forested here lived human inhabited
    for ten thousand years before,
    was farmed seasonal nomadic
    pastoralist for good
    three thousand of that
    and still the trees stood,
    the elephant roamed,
    the antelope grazed
    the forest edge in morning light

    between the 1760 arrival
    of first settlers from europe
    to these deep forest slopes
    and the forest protection act of 1940
    the forest was decimated destroyed
    logged to depletion
    the elephant sport hunted
    to functional extinction.
    a world harvested like a cornfield
    as if it took a season to grow.

    and even that protection
    was not enough
    more timber more land
    more people and towns and agriculture
    more infrastructure
    more habitat loss.

    and who are we to sing this lament,
    who am i daughter of the moon
    daughter of the forest
    daughter of a daughter
    of a colonial bastard somewhere
    who am i to sing this lament.

    and i can say not in my name –
    not in my name do you rape and burn and fell –
    not in my name –
    but here i am driving highway
    town to town – fetching my daughter
    daughter of the river forest
    daughter of the moon.
    fetching my daughter from school
    built buildings mainroad mall mcdonalds
    school where the forest stood
    where the elephants sang
    where others lived on quiet feet
    before.

    6.

    there are remnants
    bits of deep forest,
    an elephant or two,
    old trees that got away
    one close by – an old giant
    a living monument to what was
    (and perhaps one day might be)
    with boardwalks and information plaques
    age height girth
    she towers above the canopy and
    i know she is she for the berries
    she scatters in hope,
    we go there sometimes
    cross the ferned stream lean over the railing
    to place our hands on that immense lichen moss trunk.
    feel the seasons and years and centuries
    move through her slowly
    know we are in the presence
    of all that is holy.

    7.

    what songs are these
    that scald our lips
    and leave our tongues
    hot sand and grit numb
    in our mouths.

    what songs are these
    hissed in bellow anger
    that drives us beating
    beating palm to stretch skin
    under a silence of cleared sky
    where no sky had been seen
    before.

    songs of stump and limb
    and sever and ache.

    and when the tears come
    as come they will
    when the anger that burned
    is cooled by the rain.

    when the tears come
    and we sing the lament
    of every tree that was felled –
    until there is no more
    in us left to sing

    who then will plant the trees –
    who then will have breath enough
    to sing the saplings to the sky.

    8.

    i sing a song of mothers
    the song of mornings
    the song of scars that heal
    and seed banks held quiet
    in waiting soil.
    of mphephu and bitou
    that cover bare earth
    like a gauze like a bandage
    like a shroud for the dead
    to soothe protect cool the soil
    grow the seeds –
    the song of keurboom and halleria
    budlleja and rhus –
    pioneer trees that sprout and sapling
    and weave a low canopy
    where the old trees the slow trees
    the timber giants can grow
    slow in the light
    in a forest of becoming
    and becoming

    9.

    “earth my body,
    water my blood”

    For Sherry at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: THE TONGUES OF FALLING TREES

    https://earthweal.com/2022/11/14/the-tongues-of-falling-trees/

  • morning walk : learning the snake dance

    ,

    this morning, most mornings
    first light, while the kettle warms
    i take the short dew-walk
    barefeet through the garden
    up the drive to the goathouse
    to open the door for the day,
    release the two hens with
    their twenty two chicks between them
    let the goats out among the trees
    scoop scraps around the bales
    for the rabbits

    after tea there will be feeding
    and watering and attending
    but for now – first light
    this is enough.

    some mornings
    are more wild than others –
    when i returned to the goathouse
    an adder was resting
    in the soft threshold sun
    maybe the length of my arm
    potent patterned beautiful
    perhaps she had slept
    the night among the bales.

    puff adders are territorial
    they choose a place and live there –
    a goathouse is not a good home
    for a puff adder –
    too many goats
    too many dogs
    too many early mornings late nights
    barefeet in the twilight –
    too many patterns and
    spaces among the bales.

    we do not kill here,
    we live alongside –
    night adder and boomslang
    and herald and more,
    but puff adders are slow to move
    quick to strike
    and sometimes lethal.
    she had to find another home.

    gumbooted and elder-staffed
    i watched her, peaceful
    she slept a slow river
    in the sun-warm dust.
    watched she did not slip away
    among the bales while
    my daughter phoned the snake catcher
    they have release permits
    for puff adders in wild places.

    slowly she became
    aware of my presence –
    tasted the air with her dark adder tongue
    pulled her tail a little closer –
    settled in the sun once more.

    the snake catchers, all four of them,
    were unavailable.

    some mornings
    are a little more wild than others
    and some things need to be done
    whether we want to do them or not

    i watched, cautious as a cat
    watched her scale ripple and silent
    as she folded along a log,
    rested her adder head
    on her broad scaled back
    and watched – time passed
    while we watched each other
    and i wished my tongue could speak her –
    explain my actions
    on this quiet morning in spring –
    but the space between stretched
    silent as skins pinned up to dry.

    i meant her no harm,
    but when my intention
    shifted from watching to capture
    she saw me for the danger i was
    and darted towards the goathouse,
    to shelter.

    i intercepted
    tried to lift her with the three pronged elder staff –
    but she turned muscle coil and movement –
    swimming light through the prongs.

    and so our dance began –
    her leading me following
    slowly slowly moving her
    from the goats who watched
    slow chewing behind the fence –
    she darting and hiding –
    invisible among tree root and leaf litter –
    quiet among the undergrowth –
    watching and being watched
    until eventually flicked into the open road
    where i could half lift
    half herd her into the plastic box
    laid leaf littered and waiting –
    tip it upright
    click on the lid –
    done
    adrenaline surge laughter – done.

    i would rather not capture
    her patterned coiled beauty –
    rather not move her away away
    potent patterned coiled
    but she lives too close to wild
    to unspeak our mutual danger.

    she is the wild silence
    the dream-time dancer,
    the old medicine
    shedding life and death,
    the watching and the watched
    potent patterned coiled.

    For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE.

    https://earthweal.com/2022/11/07/a-walk-on-the-wild-side/

  • sunday morning among the trees

    ,

    birds are scattering song
    from high branches this morning,
    like berries for the faithful
    it falls light and unanswerable,

    falls trill and pulse and
    wing purr melody,
    falls sweet like
    well-tongued prayers
    on the lips of the holy.

    it calls us to deer paths and mud paths
    and roots among the moss paths,
    calls us to the silent ways of fallen leaf –
    calls us home on pilgrims feet.

    Linking to Earthweal’s open link weekend #142

    https://earthweal.com/2022/11/04/earthweal-open-link-weekend-142-2/

  • first words

    ,

    a first song
    a clapping game
    on a father’s knee –
    lindi-ann is no good
    chop her up for fire wood
    when she’s dead
    we’ll bake her head
    into ginger bread.-
    words shape us
    when our tongues
    are still learning
    to shape the world.

    there were days in between
    perhaps years, when nasturtium leaves
    were tall shade on damp spring mornings
    their parasols shining wordless
    veining cathedral glass
    against the blueness of sky
    while our hands learned gesture
    please
    want
    good bye –
    learned here is the church
    here is the steeple
    open thumb doors
    where are the people.

    one potato two potato three potato four

    when we moved from that place
    from our suburban house across the road
    from the school where my brother
    went before me
    where i used to listen for the bell
    violet fingered high in the
    branches of the mulberry tree singing
    nameless ballads of me and now and leaf
    between mouthfuls of mulberry
    and muttered incantations to
    branches out of reach

    when we moved from
    that yellow bagged purple jacarandered
    house in the suburbs i tied
    a burst blue balloon around the
    smooth barked branch
    of my friend the guava tree,
    to remind me of the place
    so that one day i might return
    and see that blue balloon
    and remember it was all true
    the world that i had sung
    was real.

    illogical
    i know

    and there were years,
    days, lives between
    when words and poets
    swallowed me jonah whole
    only to be spat out again to
    see the world anew
    and i waited by that shore,
    drew the sound the sea made
    with my toes in the sand,
    tried to build song birds
    out of found bones and broken wings,
    drank salt mist from cupped hands
    and waited
    hoping to meet that whale once more
    and once more
    and once more,

    sometimes
    waiting is not living.
    sometimes
    knee deep in the world
    the words come to find us.
    illogical
    i know

    but suppose, like now
    when warmth of spring
    has gathered grey cloud
    after a mornings weeding and
    tying taller by the hour tomatoes,
    and the rain falls sudden and hard
    and the heat and the smell of it
    rises damp thirst quenched from the soil,
    and these words, all the words
    become a blue balloon
    tied to a smooth bark branch
    marking a place where
    the world sang true.

    For Joy Ann Jones at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: FIRST POEMS, DOOR TO THE WILDER EYE.

    https://earthweal.com/2022/10/31/first-poems-door-to-the-wilder-eye/

  • black oystercatcher

    ,

    inhabitant of a foggy coast
    of shifting tide beginnings and ends undefined –
    were you here that day long-legged
    red beaked on the beach –
    were you here that day the boats came
    floating upturned whales
    riding the waves we came
    were you here.
    were you here that day the world changed
    tree by tree the world fell and changed
    and you ran with the tide
    briefly airborne
    while a wave crash flooded the oyster beds
    and then landed living again
    were you here.
    were you here that day the forest people left
    no trace of their living
    but some shell memories in a cave
    and a hole in a fast imploding world.
    did you watch as the wind
    stole their footprints – erased their path
    were you here, wet gusts tugging
    at black feathers
    when they left.
    were you here the day the elephants came
    grey fogged skin wrinkling out
    the forest with the tide
    they paused a moment
    breathed whale-song on the beach
    and then sighed into sea – gone.
    did you shrill call their names
    cry windblown for their loss
    do you fly the mist breakers
    still searching for their return –
    were you here.
    were you here the day they were born –
    turtle carried they came
    wave lullabied and brought to this shore.
    were you here the day they came,
    do you share this beach that breathes
    at the edge of tomorrow
    will you be here the day
    they dance this world’s beginning
    dancing full bright
    on this edge of unknown.
    the time is close oystercatcher
    will you be here still
    running with the tide.

    2013

    First published in holy ground, 2014

    For Sherry at Earthweals weekly challenge: WILD SOULS.

    https://earthweal.com/2022/10/10/earthweal-weekly-challenge-wild-souls/

    Since writing this in 2013 I am pleased to read that the population of the African Oystercatcher has stabilised and it it is no longer on the threatened species list.

  • burn this if you want to

    ,

    i offer no illusion
    last night the hen house was raided.
    opened the door to a mess of
    feathers and blood this morning,
    all of them gone.

    nothing of the spotted hen but her liver
    licked clean on some star splashed quills.
    the rooster dead and whole in the middle of it all,
    too big to be carried into the night.

    and what is to be done now
    when there is no undoing
    and blossoms still open
    petal by petal
    to the sun.


    i offer no hope, i never could.
    i never could be your shield
    in the face of inevitability,
    your deep pool
    waiting for you to drown
    in your own reflection.

    i want to see us thrive,
    but that is between me and
    and the rich dark earth –
    hands and knees
    in the garden.

    i offer no explanation
    the moon rose.
    the raspberries were good, tart,
    early or perhaps really really late
    either way there is no space in the sky anymore
    for anything other than what always was
    and always is. plastic bags have learned to swim like jellyfish,
    riding ocean currents crammed thick and close
    with plankton and krill and bottles and stuff.

    i offer no religion
    but the taste of rain
    and pulsing forest
    though you know
    we turn to prayer
    when the world is aflame
    and the ocean starts to gnaw
    at our cities, but who then
    will be listening –
    which sane god would choose
    to love us now.


    and of course we ran when the flames came close.
    laid my hands on the soil of my home,
    whispered stay safe while spring flower heads
    towered and lolled in the unseasonable wind.
    crammed child and goat and dog in our car
    and fossil-fuelled our way to safety –
    an ugly irony in this warming world.

    i offer no excuse:
    this is not a season we might remember,
    but a landscape.
    winter has washed through us,
    left our bones clean to the wind

    and yet spring rises – sap green and bursting,
    birds are building nests in my hair.
    when autumn comes,
    the birds will fly
    and i will be here
    still,
    here.


    i offer nothing but this effigy.
    gathered words and cloth bound with hair
    and the grass rings woven while
    the wild freesias bloom along the river

    where sometimes fish as long as my arm
    leap, slap the surface silver and
    return to the depths i could never fathom –
    even in summer, diving below,
    ears taut and full with pressure
    arms reaching beyond my breath
    outstretched until there is nothing but sun-shafts, shadow-water
    and eternity looking at this moment bathed in light.

    i offer only this
    burn it if you want to.

    First published in Dark Mountain vol 15 – revised and reposted for Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A LYRE FOR A CHANGING EARTH. Read his essay here https://earthweal.com/2022/10/03/lyre-for-a-changing-earth/

  • orientation

    ,

    orientation

    lying in my bed
    listening for the sunrise
    my feet stretch north
    warming my toes on the equator.
    right ear to the morning,
    left to the setting sun,
    my hair drifts southwards –
    tidal swirlings on an infinite sea.

    arms spreading east and west
    form the coastal belt
    outeniqua tstitsikama langeberg kouga
    mountainous names that follow curves
    peak in breasts with armpit valleys
    and soft catchments where
    elbows have folded in on themselves
    for years.

    these are long arms
    that cling white knuckled
    to the edge of africa,
    strong arms that embrace.

    this is warm earth, fertile plains
    and the bones that sing my history.
    from hand to hand an arc of sky
    and the path of sun and moon
    flooding me with light.

    written june 2015

    revised september 2022

    For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A MAP OF HISTORY’S MYSTERIES.

    Read the essay here https://earthweal.com/2022/09/19/earthweal-weekly-challenge-historys-mysteries/