Today’s poem, bubbled out of the crab holes on Kilifi beach with the incoming tide, as I took my first walk last night, after a beach-less year
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Ocean Lullaby
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First walk on sun-set beaches,
Shadows stretch on sand,
Waves grey with coming sleep
Softly roll inland.
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Warm wind my skin caresses,
Sighs in lullabies,
Inside exhaustion stretches,
I’ll sleep so deep, tonight.
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Kilifi, 2022
Life, like an impressionist painting,
Clearly, you see what is there
From a distance.
Moving closer, you are not quite so sure.
The nearer you approach
The more uncertain; themes flow and blend.
Blue is sky… or water, music…
or just a feeling,
A sense of something caught in the moment of leaving.
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You observe something simple, appealing,
Red, a flower in a field,
Or is it an elaborate dress, a sunset, a heart,
Something final, bending towards an ending?
Sinister? Blood, fear,
A sense of sounds… you cannot hear.
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Petals, scattered across water,
A joyful, dancing crowd,
Starlit night,
Cobbled streets, gleaming with rain,
Up close, a jumble of colours,
Incomprehensible –
Leaves you free
To reinterpret what you see.
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Windhoek, 2022
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Pleasant to believe we get wiser with age,
Perhaps we do…
Refine strategies for changing life phases,
Replacing tactics that have lost their edge,
Reading again ‘The Art of War’,
And being just that step ahead.
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We’ll get here soon enough.
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Kampala, 2022
So many shades of every colour,
Red; from blood to roses,
Blue reflects skies and oceans, even moods, music.
But green… green
Surely, she is Queen.
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The garden on Malcolm X, Kampala, 2020