Highlands

This song which soared into the Stormberg
sounds steeped in something else,
rising into the rainclouds’ rumbling
as lightning strikes a massive stone
just by the side of a dirt road
become a river, and me riveted
to the echo in my chest,
feeling choked up by the chance
that seems to have chosen this moment
to make me chant with thunder.

It was only when I came to two
willows waiting at Moshoeshoesford,
and stopped to greet the great king,
that he told me chance is not
some random roll of the die,
but really an opportunity to observe
the difference in how storms speak
and what it can mean to sing
from a place named after rocks
which can still call lightning and love
the charge they’ve chosen to carry.

All I’m left to do is die again,
press my face into the sodden earth
and say just one sincere word,
then smile as widely as I can
when I get to where I’m sleeping
and see that it’s called Lovedale,
the sign made from shards of mirror,
reading this reflection.

Traces

Chasing tales

Universally