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where the red earth meets him
where the red earth meets him
( for Nev, on the wings of healing)
He remembers Africa as the earth did—
from the feet up.
The air there held
the weight of thunder without release,
like breath he couldn’t exhale
until the rains came.
He remembers
the scent of petrol on warm wind,
plastic chairs tipped into laughter,
a goat tethered beneath hibiscus bloom—
life, without symmetry, but full.
Then came the steel and silence.
Now, he watches suburban jacarandas
shed purple over bitumen.
His daughter draws suns
in the condensation on windows.
His wife folds the washing slowly,
as if every shirt remembers.
He forgave.
Which is not to say he forgot.
He dreams of red clay underfoot,
of hands thick with dust,
of rivers that knew his name
before he forgot it.
And sometimes,
when the sky breaks open here—
brief, hard, uncertain—
he steps into the yard, barefoot,
and lets the rain ask the questions for him.
.
