The fathomed savannahs of deep African lanes,
a crushed longitude
where wounded lives
drowned within a war-torn ocean.
Your schoolgirl memory recalled
the brother who failed to register
home, but disappeared within
unnatural whirlpools of destruction.
The turbulence of loss
beneath the rummage of ivory waves,
his final sky imagined
before the death of light
as the tide’s consuming hunger
extinguished the energy of blood,
remembered now those vessels
engraved on the unique map of your
questioning voice, echoed like the sound
you heard outside
the door when the cold
December news arrived.
Grey Sparrow Journal 