About A Road (A Short Walk, A Long Way)
For Mandela
In a Cape Town township
(Where me and Josie volunteer)
(Where me and Josie volunteer)
I hear a choir singing
behind the shiny tin of red church walls
and wonder how voices
can sound like they're smiling.
I ask Josie, but she does not know
why it matters.
Can she not feel the harmony
float their weight up
above the row of shacks
painted yellow and blue -
flaring in the after-school heat?
I ask Josie to slow her walk -
I want to bask in this song,
to feel its glow.
Josie does not slow down.
Her feet do not know
that I have come to
this difficult, bright blooded
country to heal,
and this is what I needed to hear -
people bringing their faith
together and singing
about a road
troubled with dirt.
