Jaywig's Journeys

Eastern Highlands, Zimbabwe, 1985

Chimurenga War punished this colonial potato farm.
Mugabe's New Order allows re-creation as a holiday house.

I tie you to my back, little one, walk as if toting
a sack of meal from the store. The Africans with us
refrain from pity.

Underfoot, hills and vales of moss and conifer sheddings
and your weight countered by the lift of lichens, frail
and dense as cobwebs.

I am walking like a huntress. At the lookout, scan
a city of floating inselbergs, a deep broad borderland. How far
they had to climb

out of Mocambique, those freedom fighters.
I lace my fingers beneath your slung bottom,
pace restless.

Juliet says  if we speak bad things about the views here
the spirits will be so angry we can never come again.

From this windowsill of the world, we trudge then
the shortcut to our rebuilt house, our place for retreat
and play.

Asleep, you sag, drag my shoulders back 
while my feet step lightly, caressing the path
to recovery.