my mother says she sees him

She said… I see him outside 
in that area beyond the house. 
It must have been the yellow in her eyes. 
She has had time since he left 
to scrub them into clear marbles, 
and allow saltwater to rinse them, 
but the yellow has stayed, like rust 
on an abandoned freshwater pipe. 
When we were young, she would see 
into our childish dreams with them, 
in the unforgiving dark. 
He stands there bent at the waist, 
refusing to crack or to break, 
and she describes his teeth, clenched 
like a beast holds in its jaws 
a wriggling body by the thew, 
in the dim light beside the door. 
She sees this with her marbles. 
They couldn't break him when 
they hauled him off in cuffs, after 
searching our house and bringing years 
of its ceilings down. They wouldn't 
break him, later when they refused us 
the body of his son they had killed. 
He holds the rife murder of his son 
in the mouth between his teeth. 
After the storm he came back, added 
muscle to his limbs, arms, legs, 
to the tree trunk of his neck. 
Nothing cold-hearted or immoderate 
but an annual ring each year 
added to his bole—as he grew roots 
deep as an icicle that finally enters earth  
with each new drop of blood that creeps 
down the path of life. That’s how 
when his frozen months arrived, he dug in. 
It made him live, made him get back  
to hoeing his country of youth, a plot  
of Qoaling where people, like sequoia trees, 
tower over the roof of a forest and care for 
its soul. That is what my mother said. 


Rethabile Masilo
    

She sees this with her marbles

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