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Andrew Geary

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Faith

Young Amani is grounded,
his feet cocooned in bandages,
yellowing flasks of infection.
Tiny fleas are burrowing under his toe-nails
like bugs under stones.
He is told that if he has faith, he will get well.

His room has one high window like a porthole.
All he can see of his friends playing football outside
is the dust devil they whisk from the baked earth
as they scamper around bare-footed, as he did
before the jiggers fouled him, brought him down.
He had dreamt of becoming Kenya’s next Kadenge.

Now he dreams of becoming an airline pilot.
If he props himself up on his elbows, like so,
he can watch, through his window, planes on their flight-path
unzipping the stratosphere with their vapour trails –
comets, skytrains, jumbos, airbuses –
silver arrow-heads powering into the future.

This is the faith he has.
That one day he will shake off his sick-boots,
slip into uniform with shiny shoes,
stride out through that door,
be shown to an airliner decked in familiar colours,
seat himself at the controls, those starry gauges,

take off and climb higher than Kilimanjaro
leaving his room far below
small as a jigger flea
burrowing down into the skin of his past,
while he flies the national football team
off to World Cup glory.

Page(s) 17

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