dawn-drawn

This is the first post in a long while, and I'm picking up the project again with a new favorite poet: Isobel Dixon. Her poem, She Comes Swimming , can be found at Poetry International. Below is my response: Coming home  a poem by Jean Watermeyer, after Isobel Dixon Who can welcome us home, swimming sister, on this plastic-plagued beach beside the prison island? Perhaps a child might find Ophelia in the stormwater scum, might hold out a hand, say Mommy, can we take her home? or the bush-sleeping man at this edge of the road or only the whispers of whichever families loved this lee, this scent, this mountain, too before we were cast up here da Gama, da Gama, our mothers giving birth in their complicity their language, our language, taking and giving,  shelter, blood, sky, looking the man on the beach in the eye To some it is given to stay, but war, but wealth, but empire— the beach receives our comings,  our goings, alone, a crew, a generation— Hello, hello a fish braai, a photo, a