Sparklers

Last week’s prompt for the Comeback Bloggers: write about an event (or events) that revealed to you the world was not simple, that moved you from being a child to being an adult.

During my younger years in Burundi, I sensed the tension between different Burundian groups at times, but just in small ways. I’m not really sure when I realized the enormity of that conflict, which ultimately led to many killings and caused neighbors and friends to flee to other countries.

One event which remains especially vivid in my memory is finding out soldiers had taken away our African pastor and his sons. They were never seen again, and presumably died at the hands of the government. Such happenings made me wonder, “Why them and not me?”

Initially, my poem started out with a fun image, lighting sparklers in the back yard, and then evolved to include thoughts on “vanishing.”

FOURTH OF JULY IN BURUNDI


At twilight
the sly Southern Cross
beams,
convinces us
it’s brighter than
our Northern
constellations.

Mother takes us outside
to celebrate America’s Fourth,
continents away
from grandparents
uncles, aunts,
cousins.

Sparklers fizz.
Our tilted faces
here
and gone
there
and vanished.

How many faces
vanished
over the border
into Tanzania
just across
rows of mountains
filling our picture window?

Each of us
children
screams
“Light another!”

Night closes in.

We clutch
the thin wires
as sparklers
sputter
and fade.

Bridge of Hope

At The Justice Conference in February, I found out about a group helping children through an organization called Bridge of Hope. Today I spoke to Steward, one of their volunteers, about what the group's doing in India and other Asian countries. The young man called just as I was about to sit down, drink my tea, and read the Oregonian. After I got off the phone, it struck me how differently I live than most of these children, who often labor long hours for a bit of food. Many of them live in fear of sexual predators and struggle to obtain health care and minimal education.

I'm not sure how I'm meant to be involved yet. There are multiple places I can help out, and only so much time and money. But at least I can spread awareness. That's why I linked to Bridge of Hope.

Thinking about these children called to mind a poem I wrote a few years ago. It's about a Burundian friend and his little girls.

My prayer -- may all children, male and female, know what it is to be safe and cared for by adults they trust.



SINDAMUZI’S LITTLE GIRLS

All dressed up
for Sunday night --
beautiful thick hair
frizzed high,
batik wraps: purple,
yellow, magenta.
Sindamuzi’s little girls
are African orchids
beginning to bloom,
iridescent moths
hovering
at their father’s elbow,
lit candles
aglow
in the dusky rugo.


Kirundi words:
*Rugo -- a home and yard, usually enclosed by a fence

A Reading At The English Bookstore

Hey, just to let you know, I'll read a few of my poems this Thursday night, 7:30 pm at the English Bookstore, Plöck 93 in Heidelberg. I'm participating as part of the Heidelberg Writers Group -- a group for English-language writers and poets. If you live nearby, come and join us!

Also, one of my poems, "Hyena Ridge," is out this month in Cicada Magazine for teens. Yay! You won't find my poem in the online version, though, just the print one. Have any of you had good news lately -- writing-related or otherwise?

Rwandan Litany

Here's the poem of mine that appeared in the spring 2007 edition of Portland Magazine, edited by Brian Doyle. Check out the magazine website for more stories and photos!

RWANDAN LITANY

Praise for the laughing group
of schoolchildren
& their chant: “abazungu, abazungu!”
Praise for the scarlet-crested turaco
wings flashing red and black,
pecking guavas split by the sun.
Praise for the priest’s forearm
corded with veins.
Praise for dugout fishing boats,
trolling Lake Kivu at midnight.
Praise for cowhide drums
beaten by men’s callused palms.
Praise for the widows, draped
in coarse cotton.
Praise for all manner of beetles.
Praise for yeast bread, baked
in rusted barrel ovens.
Praise for the overturned truck
on Kijabe’s slick curve,
a woman prematurely in labor
beside it.
Praise for rain on tin rooftops,
erratic tap-tap and din of water.
Praise for the market lady
and her piles of soap,
rice, razorblades.
Praise for the plastic shunt
in a child’s skull,
draining excess fluid.
Praise for coffee beans.
Praise for red dust
caking each eyelash.
Praise for voices rising
from terraced banana groves.

Emmaus Poem

APPEARANCES

In mid-day’s heat
Grit coats the donkey’s mane,
Rubs eyelids rough.
Hours of uneven ground
Stretch ahead. Salt traces
Sparkle, crystal constellations
Fallen along Emmaus road.
Our salt, our lives leaked
Out to dry. Gleaming.

Questions scrape
Like jagged pebbles
Against my sole.
I am without the one
Who would walk
My dusty passageway
Of recently buried gods.

Past serrated mountains,
Joining us, another traveler
Chewing handfuls of olives.
Loudly, he spits the wet stones
Down angled cliffs broken
By thorn trees. Jackals
Startle in their wild slumber.

When this bearded stranger
Wrapped in desert robes
Speaks, he fires my heart –
Prophecy’s brittle crust
Splits open, its dull golden
Glow fanned into flame.
Even the rocks have begun to burn
And sizzle under our feet.

A poem

REMEMBERING HUTU AND TUTSI FRIENDS, NOW DEAD

In my dreams, you’re still
long grass-limbed,
cricket-throated,
fiery star-faced
as the feverish Burundi night.

In my thoughts, you’re still
cool wind-wrapped,
red dust-powdered,
eucalyptus-scented
as Burundi’s uncertain dawn.