This week’s poem, written a few months ago, shortly after returning to Uganda. Inspired by the immediacy of life in a place where life is beautiful, raw but also hard. In a place where many people have lost and suffered much.

Now

Prickle of sun on my shoulders,

Moisture waking under warm skin,

Ache in a thigh muscle.

I am this thirst and tread

Along warm tarmac.

Past, a reinterpreted moonscape,

Future, a land too foreign to catch my interest

Love, an echo of instinct

Without logic,

An emptiness nature abhors.

Heat is real: sweet, warm and wet,

Now is this moment.

Here is who I am

Arua 2017