Sand
Blake saw a world in a grain of sand.
I see two worlds. There was the one
I was born in where my feet sank
with every step leaving footprints
that lasted until erased by desert winds.
It took an hour or so to walk
the mile or so with leaking buckets,
collect the water needed for our crops.
We tried to make the sand stick
with manure from our goats
but the water kept draining away.
Hunger drained the colour from our lives.
I remember sitting by the lake
wishing it was in the West
like the ones I’d seen in magazines
with terraces covered in fruit
so plentiful no-one rushed to devour it;
with tourists obsessed with how
they looked in brand new clothes
drinking from bottles with expensive labels.
They would see in our lake
the kind of paradise they pay for.
Perhaps it’s just as well they can’t get here.
I can see them never watching out;
a naïve faith in their own safety.
To us the lake was a fishless nightmare,
the last caught with mosquito nets.
I know every spot where crocodiles
and other tribes have taken lives.
Now I live in a world
where sand and water
have been mixed with cement.
Each day I walk on that concrete
which blocks out the sky.
I walk up carpeted stairs
in shoes with padded soles,
read books hoping to get excited
by what happens to someone else.
I miss sand grains under my toenails,
the ones that made up the sands
my feet used to sink into.
Page(s) 18-19
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