Bodies make strangers of us as we age:
we stoop, whisper, stumble and grow impatient quickly
but in our eyes the real soul lurks:
unexpected snowflakes of wit
Each one different, though:
in my aunt’s face – unseen for years –
suddenly my mother lives
She is on the brink, almost emerging
in the straight voice,
the call to rearrange the world nearby,
forcing it to make sense
She sits by the sea, where it is too cold
and asks for more light,
yet she is not there to be comforted
as she could never be comforted
because the world can never be remade:
it is always fading away
And so this Cape Town evening slips into haze across the bay
and the mountain becomes invisible
like heaven, or regions beyond
age and beauty