Wednesday 3 April 2013

NaPoWriMo Day 3 Poem 1 - Needed

National Poetry Writing Month is upon us and I'm juggling an MA, a part time job as well as curating and performing at live poetry events around London and the UK... but I won't be defeated! I will attempt a free-write / poem a day for a month.. In the truthful words of Simon Mole "oh' shit, someone has let Ray out without an editor" - all poems are first drafts.

On the way back from
Belthorn Primary, (a school
me and Josie are volunteering at)
I hear a choir singing
behind the shiny red and silver
church walls in the middle
of a Cape Town Township
and wonder how voices
can sound like they're smiling.

         I ask Josie, but she does not know
why it matters.

 we pass a row of shacks
     painted yellow and blue -
flaring in the after-school heat.

          I ask Josie to slow her walk -
I want to hear the choir.

     Josie does not slow down.

        She does not know
that I have come to
  this difficult, beautiful
country to heal,
and this is what I needed
to hear -

     people bringing their faith
together and singing
     about a road
troubled with dirt,
dirt that is
                dancing.

1 comment: