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The gathering
Like someone assembling a brow into a frown, the atmosphere outside
gathers; not out of anger but out of the knowledge of what is inevitable.
The first, few, flakes of sleet are on the way; the house is beginning to chill,
to ready for a post-mortem. The dog was turbulent last night, whimpering
in its kennel, sobbing like a child. They say yesterday’s errors
make tomorrow a new day. They say what was built on terror will end
in grief, until the sky opens its arms like a mother when a child gets home.
I don’t feel life in my body anymore, when I watch my mother’s sipping tea.
Afternoon clouds hanging above look like the hoary hair of ancestors
with their lifetimes upside down, their bitterest rain about to pour.
—Rethabile Masilo