"...
those last months' refrain
is still in my head,
you tied to the bed:
"I can't get well
if they won't let me get up
on my feet."
..."
- extract from What never was (After 'Five Pinecones' by Arja Salafranca), in Section 8 of Greater Matter - Facts of Blood
Gearing up for tonight's reading at Off The Wall at Roxy's in Woodstock, Cape Town, I'm looking forward to seeing my dear friends and brave editors, fellow Ecca poets Ed Burle and Jacques Coetzee, as well as OTW veteran Hugh Hodge: whose poetic midwifery started and nurtured me on the first leg of my journey 13 years back, as my poems slowly traipsed their way into more and more public readings. I'm also looking forward to greeting people I've not met before ...
I'll confess it here: it feels like a part of the journey of becoming me, as if my feathers were losing fluffiness, growing by some inner secret programme into sleekness and I'm learning to oil them by fluids I did not know before were there.
It's a journey taken before by a million others, but, like any baby born, it's the first of its kind and will never be again. Learning to stand!
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