There are three rooms.

She chooses the bricks, the tiles, the proportions.

He chooses the one with a bed, a chair,

there’s no mirror, he’s grown old

without knowing. Outside, sun

bakes the high walls.

And among the mopani trees,

where a yellow and black tortoise

shuffles butterfly leaves,

he waits for the time of rosellas,

spreads maize cobs to dry flat

on a garden’s red earth

to keep them safe from the men

who will rob, who are new;

orders her dogs gently in Shona

as he walks them on kopjes

where stories are told without words

in caves without date.

On a field overgrown with weeds,

a child stumbles, the infant tied to her back

tries to cry.

Rosella: A tropical shrub with short-lived yellow flowers.

The fruit is made into jelly with a flavour of rose-hips.

Shona: The language of the Mashonaland people.

Kopje:  A small natural hill.

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Is it the Oscar he never wins,

his glance to camera

surreptitious, lean?   

Or the night, bare-skinned,

she pulls up the sheet?

My tent, she says.

Or the number of candles

she lights?

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Once they reared up in her fingers, argued,

ranted, mimicked the shape of her palm,

vied for space with the flame of her dress –

as the hem licked the air, her heels began to drum

inviting reply. Raising her arms, drawing the dawn

over her breasts, her hands were singing.

The granadillo shells are silent now.

Stroking their smoothness

she remembers the scent of patchouli,

of freshly-picked lemons, skins tasting of sorbet;

of swirling names, the juices of cities;

of a dancer waiting, dark as stone,

where a thousand olives soaked in amphora

and a flamenco guitar spoke centuries.

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Caught in a camera's flash of light

by a man with a love of wild places,

the bison stands in a halo of frost

unaware of the womb-heat of willow;

of shadows of tepis, blanket-swaddled

for prophesy; of spirit-songs

mute under circles of ravens

while lost dreamers sleep

and breathing stones steam.

Wary of man, of the love

of wild places, of flashes of light,

ice-wounds from the sun,

too late for ghost dancers

the bison is gone.

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