Quality of Africa’s light

announces late farm afternoon.

Dwindling childhood on lengthening limbs,

early adolescence budding.

Sisters, shoes and socks unruly with pencil cases,

school bags tumbling books, brothers stretching

desk-bent week from youthful backs.

Run barefoot across prickly lawn-

first at the Cape gooseberry bushes,

hurried harvest popping bitter-sweet pips

on my boarding-school starched tongue.

Dhaka 2015