In Conversation with Uninformed Bones

Hot veld and cold seas frame these ancestral scenes,
Ngurumo breathes in his African bloodline (and mine),
A dust laden, salty air swirls around his skull,
Flows down to his navel and back up through his lungs,
Never having stepped on a dead twig or stumbled,
Over an ant hill he stands motionless, skull-still,
His body as tall and as straight as the two spears,
Of Lobengula set in the dry clay - watch him...
Scan the Ndebele plains for his Princess, knowing,
“War is grass that suffers when two elephants fight.”
Carnelian anger fills the whites of his eyes,
Red fury from which Great-Great-Grandmother hides.

Coal dust blind and gathering steam, the engineer,
Sets the Blue Train in motion out of Beaufort West,
The whisky-eyed Anglicized in the plush carriage,  
Heady with imperial and jocular wit, say:
“A diamond’s a flint that has come to its senses.”   
Great-Grandfather, the steam whistle in his left hand,
And, in his right, a revolver for insurgents,
Or maybe his brains being a half-cast driving a train,
A man trapped at the plate, his life as straight as rails,
From bible beatings and a mother’s bliss-filled lies,
Covering his tracks, he yanks on his rope and yells,
“Lord! Bring my love back!” across the mighty Karoo.

Of seafaring blood, conquest and naval regard,
How drunk-ugly Granddad becomes, as blown up twice,
In World War One, torpedoed once in World War Two,
Shipmates dead or remade with one arm and one leg,
Fit to care for doves and collect their pale blue eggs,
Never out of the fight, a Lucifer lit his butt,
Girls who love fun, pity his handsome, timid son,
Dad took a Agfa of me balanced on a bomb,
An unexploded mine washed ashore on a beach,
He had every intention of loving me,
He too lost his mates to the cold, indifferent sea,
on a phosphate run, when on leave, and could not do.

A post war, English rose of pure English stock he met,
Mother  - she knew how to use clay when it is wet,
Make a home, and keep a man who dreamed to be free,
Of ancestral ties but could never be. I watched him,
Berate Earth and sky, heard his inner voices call,
For adventure and quest, leaving me my choices,
No one will tell my bones my thoughts must ever rest,
A big heart should be out there searching, not held back,
By fear or suffering or bought off and housed, and so,
I shake my spear, scream like a train, raise the wind,
As approaching, through a mirage walks my Princess,
In full flood and fertile, for she walked it alone.

Skull still and in silence I scan the vast plain,
Stand straight as two spears when she calls out my name,
My fever a firebox of engineer coal,
As the dead floating by tilt to drown her dove call,
Dust swirls, salts flow, lightening’s tempered by rain,
As her touch turns wet clay into fine porcelain       ,
"Love me! !! - Wrap your arms around me! !!
Let me go now, so Life does not fossilize me!"
I toss and I turn, pull and push, then atone,
Converse with my ancestors’ uninformed bones,
This the sadness of sons, this the bliss mothers claim,
No release just to love, free of charge and of blame.