i looked at her face

And i was confronted by engraved tributaries

Spidying in trickles trinkets in a thousand cracks impressions

 

Hair bleached

By the wink and dosing suns

That peer, skip and dunked away during her lifetime

Silvered not by artificial means, nay-nay

But a grey of knowledge

Her magnetic eyes

Washed out as if by thousands and thousandth of life’s film reels

Year in year out as her moon galloped onwards

Her faded fiery orbs giving in to complain as they hold the world with a soft gaze

Dazed and weaned of their potency at everything life has strewn before them in a swoosh

 

Ears sagged

Like heavy puffy bags that held over the years all and all of all noises, sayings, stories

Fabled sagged and suckled

And the potency of listening itself

An art that a few master in their circle of life

Movement obscured by retardation of all miles walked

All grounds conveyed beneath

Her scuffles

Sole screech

Pause

A look here, a look there. Aloft. Brittle.

But cherished as a prime leaf in free fall;

Standing on an extra leg

Squeaky woodenly leg

Indexing the unreliable heavens

 

And as you’re young ‘ones sway in the harsh wind slap blow

Reckon that time claims everything

Somber warm tears shimmer

Meshed with selfish gladness and burrowing sorrow

Oh dear, we’re sated in every seconds of your sageful breath taken with us

And in your spring we’re quelled quenched, nkokoa’rona.

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

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• This Poem originally written in 2014 is dedicated to the matriarch my grandmother Mmule Evelyn Kgokong affectionately known as Mmane Baba (8 December 1922 – 8 January 2020). May your commune with the primordial be blissful eternally.