At Nanyuki,
the equator runs below my feet,
and I think there must be a seam,
six lines of coarse stitches,
like a cricket ball,
holding the halves together,
but over asphalt and tamed bush,
through outlines of bare acacia trees,
there are smiles and tears,
and unspoken fears, Jambo,
he shouts into the cold wind;
cold like it was in Greenwich,
straddling the Meridian,
east and west like lovers meeting,
parting, daring old Kipling*,
somewhere here the silk roads ended
as oceans spilt secret routes
to gold paved streets
of yet another new world;
so many lines, to divide, to rule,
when we cannot command the whole,
drawing lines, against, across,
until there are tiny boxes,
matrix within matrix,
one for you, one for me,
the size of coffins,
our stories inside them,
double spaced in Arial 12;
and us, shackled,
bound in our cells,
marked and labelled,
toeing lines we cannot see,
splitting us, joining us,
but all we feel is the chill;
the air is cold here,
in our lonely rectangles,
like in Nanyuki,
where I stand,
where the equator cuts
the earth that has no seam.
Stunning!
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Thank you Rosemary.
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Many lines divide us if we let them. Beautiful poem.
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Thanks so much.
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Your poem brings to my mind the situation taking place between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A line that isn’t there… but that still rips apart people that should be the children of the same land.
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Lovely. Indeed the earth has no seam, but we humans somehow find it necessary to invent one! If only we humans did not find it important to divide everything up with lines.
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Thank you Mary.
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I can see those wished for stitches to mark the centre….love the place name of your setting.
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Thank you Sherry.
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Yes, there are so many lines that divide us. Can we find a way to erase at least some of those lines?
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I wish… thanks MMT.
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The analogy if the cricket ball is very tangible – the divisions and lines in our lives almost as ingrained and hard to bowl out
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True. Thanks so much Jae.
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Such a deep and rhetorical write ❤
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your lines take me to my younger days in Zambia, a land of the baobabs, Zambezi, the Bemba language….Africa is a part of my heart….
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Glad they do Sumana… thank you 🙂
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yes; we have all at sometime popped into our heads to question frames of references, Luv this rhetorical write today
much love…
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Thank you..
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It is sad that it has taken so long for mankind that it doesn’t decide the rules when you think that only a few hundred years ago Columbus was expected to sail right over the edge of the supposed flat Earth. Common sense clearly not so common for gullible humans and still it goes on as those that make money can’t see the harm they are doing to the planet.
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True. Thank you Robin.
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Wow! I hardly know where to begin! Maybe with those last two lines that sum up the pain of colonialism in this amazing poem: “where the equator cuts / the earth that has no seam.” And that is how the game of cricket traveled the world, so the cricket ball is another sum of attempts at stitching the world in unnatural ways. And I find myself in here moving line by line toward my own demarcated space, one I haven’t actually chosen yet. If I don’t chose one, it will inevitably be chosen for me. I’m sharing this poem! ANd keeping it. Thank you.
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Thanks so much. Am glad you liked it. 😀
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I love this for so many reasons. The last time I was in London I straddled the Meridian. It brought home the entire colonial era in a way lines on a map did not. I also wonder who decided that north was up. And why Africa, larger than North and South America combined is portrayed as inconsequential.
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Thanks so much Brian. Also, here’s the link to my post for the feather prompt.. it’s from my second blog. https://phantomroad.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/19-sep-2016/
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Thanks for the link. I have so little time to scamper around reading.
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Like a parting of the clouds on a dismal day, this poem pulls me into a world of infinite possibilities framed by the limiting illusions of my mind. Thank you!
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Thanks so much TioStib.
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