Hurry Boy

I hear the drums echoing tonight... The night life of the village flickers, with the scent of sweat and meat and debris. There are so many of us circling the streets, mostly mongrels in a world purporting to hold the reins of the pure bred.

I lie close, in partial shadow, light catching the white of my collar. The night is holy.

I've flashed my teeth at the cautiously advancing stranger. We are not unfriendly. The beads and skirts make a tzsik-tzsik, swsss, but she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation: Aidi, Aidi...? I don't understand ...Coming in 12:30 flight...?

...and she is drawn back inside, the door open, like an invitation, but I press on.

Dark bats pierce the night sky with a sound unmistakable for any other. Moonlit wings... and sonar. I can hear it. I begin my round again, another path. Feet, and faces. There is lament, recognized, in searching eyes.

I stopped an old man along the way, hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies... he saw that I am lost; I am "owned."

Raising a ragged finger, he turned to me as if to say, "Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you." But he is mistaken. He has pointed to an empty hut, miles down the road. He cannot know the hunger, implanted by instinct in the heart, to keep account of the familiar and unfamiliar. He does not know the smell of life, of illness, of encroaching death. He does not know her scent. He does not know the trail.

He has identified only the rumbling in the stomach, the chill in the evening, the rustle of paper before the fire. He is kind, but modern.

Existence is different in so many ways, I can see it in the changing artifacts that overwhelm perception. How quickly things change. Metal birds fly overhead. Men are talking and making no sense: Gonna take some time to do the things we never had. Things bonded to people, taking them.

They had hopped into a beast they called Jeep; its red eyes disappeared into the night.

But I have this one distance, like a leash, in my all my lifetime it has not changed. The grounds out beyond, and then to the yard, I have walked. The home is shuttered. She may be back. She may be not. I will cross, her motherland, back, to our garden. I will watch. I will listen for her weathered voice.

Her tired tongue garrulously singing I bless the rains down in Africa, I bless the rain...

And I can feel it pensive in the atmosphere, hanging with me, and sure enough oversized drops dot the dust of the road. I've made it back to her dry wind-swept stoop and settle, nose on paws, watching the silhouette of our Serengeti.

I wait for God over Kilimanjaro. I wait with hope for tomorrow.

11.19.2023

As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus over the Serengeti @Ferryman