Grandmother Hearth
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
- 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.
