This morning in Tamale, a woman
sprinkles dried red peppers over her ceramic plate
of plantains and yams.
It is the hour of feasting, when men
and their children leave the shade of palms,
drop conversations in mid-stride, the sun
loosening its firm grip. Everything
dreamt in the night pulls back
and lets them pass by.
Could I have known, five years ago,
a morning when a meal of boiled yams
would be all I craved?
A boy on the rusty tin roof of his father’s house
draws himself surrounded by oceans
and lakes of many colors, each
with its own wooden canoes and red clay villages.
He dreams of fishing in a thousand rivers
with men he has never seen.
A voice asking for directions
ends far from the place it wishes with a taxi driver
eager to ride into the dry endless night.
Maybe now raindrops are falling from their nests
in the clouds, leaving behind bright shrines of lightning.
Maybe now the tattered yellow buses
are cooling their engines.
From the taxi’s window,
I gather in my vision the brown dust of roadways,
a mother and her daughter in a palm-frond hut,
peeling the flesh from ripened papayas,
the sun moving through the calm slate sky,
sending sapphire flames from its womb.
I collect them into my arms
and continue, wishing
for a paler blue.
Originally Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 2.
