ANOTHER LIFE
Nostalgic heart,
A painful whimper
For a life that was.
A parsimonious existence
Living life
One day at a time.
With tomorrow,
A dream
Out of reach today,
Becoming today
Lived like yesterday...
Life in the village.
Constant music,
Nature's band.
Singing birds
Clacking chickens,
Barking dogs
Cows, donkeys and more.
Feet plodding earth
Foraging the forest,
Nature's basket,
Fruits,roots,berries,
Insects too,
Men hunting for meat.
The river- a life line,
Drinking with the animals.
Boys fishing upstream'
Women, girls
Washing clothes.
A kaleidoscope of rags
Dotting bushes.
Old women bathing,
Shrivelled buttocks
Dessicated breasts,
Dead to the world.
Children playing
Shrieking,shouting
Sheer ecstacy,
A joy no money can buy!!
Girls balancing clay pots
On braided heads,
Gourds in hand,
Taking water home.
Boys heading cattle in the hills
Carving wooden weapons,
Weaving with grass
Whips to drive the beasts.
The day glides slowly by
Warmed by a lazy sun,
Taking no hostages.
A nonchalant crowd
They have conquered time.
That's another life.
1st Dec. 2008
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1 comment:
Lovely poem; I could picture the village I grew up in, and although there are two rivers, I pictured Runde, and I was one of the boys swimming...
I would remove the firts line; by the end of the poem the reader sees nostalgia. Leave the poem open for interpretation, so that another person may see something different.
I would also revisit "Living life one day at a time", because by the time I see how you played with the idea of tomorrow becoming like yesterday, I can realize that not much seems to change from day to day in the village. Those are clever lines.
Boys "heading" cattle surprises (but it's possible), but I am compelled to assume it might be herding (from experience).
I like the luxuriant and sequential presentation of the order of things in the village, the different roles everyone plays, then what attracts me most is the serenity on the surface, yet certain descriptions attest to an exhausting life (reference to the old women at the river, shrivelled by life's challenges.
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