Return of Lost Lives
Sergeant Joe, newly returned
From war of the coast,
has been lately saddled with the weight of
Love and whispers of devotion from Helen.
A smooth and silent talker,
her voice rushes at the racing, spinning wind forming
behind his keen ears, stroking them for resilient warmth.
And his nerves all stand,
Like the soldiers he met in the war.
Midnight, she reaches for the balm
in the old and wizened, soot-black coconut shell.
Accompanied by a tongue of fire the size of a
wrestler’s right thumb,
whose glow reveals the seated state of
the sergeant’s dilated eyes,
she gets to the portals of his thumping heart.
Night-drums, though placid, throb from the hollow,
hallowed chambers of a deep occult night.
They cling to each other,
Sergeant Joe and Helen,
refurbishing the scattered war-torn leaves that had
hidden the treasures the village once knew, once shielded,
from low-flapping hawks,
seeking desperately the arrival of the mighty African night rain,
nourishing deluge,
whose thick, flooding spikes deaden the sound of intruders when
midnights wince repeatedly with strong delight —
like the pummelled body of a warring legend massaged softly
with camwood.
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