Music to Abide By

Like the first big drops of the promised
rain, notes splatter my ears from instruments
we have known since before we named
the moon, when she was still nursing us,
and all the praying mantis babies
playing in my memory suddenly make sense,
finding home in your reusable nappies.

|Kaggen walks with us tonight, sweet child,
telling of the blood and cobalt used to power
reusable things, and bringing us beautiful sounds,
both bound to the very heart of Africa.
This is what the great trickster sings, softly,
into my breaking heart:

You are kirtimukha, devoted consumption.
You are fitra, crack and blueprint,
and all the angels cry at your creation,
but they know not what I do...
The old sands sing it, together with stars
that add their tsau, and all you need do is ask
and wait for light to travel beyond the lote tree,

in no time, the music rests, abides in the way
you consume yourself, come to love the very crack
your life appears from, give back the evil
you are created to overcome.

Love without name, thank you,
thank you for this life, all this life,
every moment a timeless wonder.