Landscape - Butha Buthe

b
Landscape

You must be in this place to believe it,
Feel the butterfly breeze as it brushes
Across the cliffside schoolyard grounds,
Scale the tiered sandstone bluffs with your dreams,
See the mountaintops marching in the distance,
Majestic in their crowning clouds.

The land in between dances depths like wings, with
Water-cut rifts, dongas, and an exquisite expanse
Of lyrical rises for the sheep to climb;
The sunlight rains on rooftops of tin, while
Walls of brick and stone ascend as if from seeds,
The earth, built up, and becoming the sky.

The call of a child two hillsides away
Is the Saturday afternoon song of the valleys,
And living’s rhythm is kept by the rippling leaves;
The earth’s turning slows in Butha Buthe,
Where the air is a kindred spirit
Reminding my soul how to breathe.


2.20.10