National Poetry Writing Month is upon us and I'm juggling an MA, a part time job as well as curating and performing at live poetry events around London and the UK... but I won't be defeated! I will attempt a free-write / poem a day for a month.. In the truthful words of Simon Mole "oh' shit, someone has let Ray out without an editor" - all poems are first drafts.
On the way back from
Belthorn Primary, (a school
me and Josie are volunteering at)
I hear a choir singing
behind the shiny red and silver
church walls in the middle
of a Cape Town Township
and wonder how voices
can sound like they're smiling.
I ask Josie, but she does not know
why it matters.
we pass a row of shacks
painted yellow and blue -
flaring in the after-school heat.
I ask Josie to slow her walk -
I want to hear the choir.
Josie does not slow down.
She does not know
that I have come to
this difficult, beautiful
country to heal,
and this is what I needed
to hear -
people bringing their faith
together and singing
about a road
troubled with dirt,
dirt that is
dancing.
On the way back from
Belthorn Primary, (a school
me and Josie are volunteering at)
I hear a choir singing
behind the shiny red and silver
church walls in the middle
of a Cape Town Township
and wonder how voices
can sound like they're smiling.
I ask Josie, but she does not know
why it matters.
we pass a row of shacks
painted yellow and blue -
flaring in the after-school heat.
I ask Josie to slow her walk -
I want to hear the choir.
Josie does not slow down.
She does not know
that I have come to
this difficult, beautiful
country to heal,
and this is what I needed
to hear -
people bringing their faith
together and singing
about a road
troubled with dirt,
dirt that is
dancing.
This made me smile this afternoon :)
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