Lindi-Ann Hewitt-Coleman

it took me so long
walking slow
from the end
of my outstretched arm
to here
where my heart beat –
folding me inside myself
with breath words and elbow crease skin
as i came
folding me small enough
to be the prayer
pressed gentle
in the rough stubble bark
of the world tree.

it took me so long
to remember again
unfolding expansive
on long thumbed creases
to be in the world anew.

i come here again
hands empty of prayer
to sit among the fallen
leaves and the impossible
silence of birdsong.
i come here alone
with no incantations
or songs of love
to wet my lips
and loosen my tongue
so i might speak this beauty.
i come here an empty bowl
waiting for the rain.

it was with sadness and love
that i planted the birthday tree
that she had been given
that she would have planted herself
had she lived.

we had spoken about the tree
walked the fields to find the place
where the gift of its love
might flourish
walked the fields looking
for sun and deep soil
marked the spot
with rose quartz.

she would have planted
herself there
had she lived.

i could not watch it die too
so i took the tree
from her now silent doorway
in those awful quiet days
when she was still my neighbour
even though she had passed,
and dug a hole
where she would have planted.
watered the young tree in.

i looked for it a few times
over years passed – between tenants
but her fields had grown to forest
and her garden over run with time.

we have new neighbour’s now
sunday morning first time at the garden gate
with peaches in their hands
the tree was blossoming, they said,
when they first walked the land.
they have pushed back the weeds
harvested these in time
not knowing yet
the gift they brought me
or the love that lives
in the land.

greater than the longing
for self preservation
is this longing to merge –
dissolve primordial
into parts of me
that lived
before the longing
was named.

i came here on hungry feet
restless bones long jangled
on the outskirts of a mother city
bones grown strong
in flat dry places
drinking brakwater drawn
from boreholes reaching deep
into a silent thirst
digging deep into places
my childish tongue could
never say the name of.

and all the while
lonely stones were calling

i ate from the trees
as they grew there
naartjies in the yard –
figs and gooseberries grown
on koffieklip earth in the soft hills
at the edge of the flatlands.
amatungulu for my sharp edges
picked from neat hedges grown
on the slopes of a mountain
carved of sandstone.
i moved and moved again
eating quartz and clay
and the sharp shards of arrowheads
food from an unforgiven land
hardening me off
growing listening bones.

and all the while
these stones were calling

i came here on hungry feet
from even further away than that.
i am an unmapped diaspora
of the genealogy of me.
i came here
without knowing how to speak
or the songs that sang me into being
i do not know the names
of the places
i have called home.

yet all the while
these stones were calling

my daughters’ bones
have grown here
on rich dark soils
and forest edges
they have night danced with the fireflies
and wept with the planting of trees.
we have sung new songs
to the flowing of the river
and the falling of the leaves.
let my bones grow soft here
let us be, to those who are still to come,
the ones who came before.

i have written your words on my skin
to hold while i learn to speak you.
shape my tongue and breath around names
that ache with the smell of you,
murmur exhaled ripples
along my palate
across your pebble bed back
to the edge of sandy places
where your forest being
crowds the shore.

i have written what the birds sing
and the shape of morning leaves
in letters and ink on my skin
to hold them close
until i learn
to speak you.

Learning

i could tell
i could speak the words
that make me
i could name the prayers
that walk these bones
to the living.
utter them teeth palate syllable
pause breath syllable.
follow sentences
until they flow
riverine forest path
sighing soft footed
under trees that those
who came before
have spoken into being.
i could tell.
i could whisper the words
that called me here
the mumbling in the rocks
that taught this tongue
to speak.
in silence.

Image by Tamarisk-Ray Glogauer.

i have walked away
from ifs and when.
these mountains
have long loved me
without reason
these stones and hills
have sung my bones
formed my flesh
to its purpose.
today i walk softly
on the sacred skin
of home.

this inevitability
of death
is not yours alone
but mine and ours
and theirs.
a birthright
that we do all claim,
inevitably.
but in the moment
between birth and death
while the raven rips
the blueness of sky,
we stand ablaze
singing the light
through leaves.