HALF A WORLD FROM HERE

Such beauty and health and wealth...

And do not the woven

Dried grasses of Africa smell spicy sweet?

There is gold in those woven grasses...

But the grass of my homeland 

While tawny in summer hold for me

A bouquet that does not fascinate as much;

It is perhaps too familiar.

I wonder what the women of Rwanda or Tanzania

Would make of them? Exotic California!

Bottle blondes and Corvettes 

On backroads, among hills as gold as the veldt...

[NOTE: Improvised and written in the moment. I was savoring the scent on this ceremonial plate made in Rwanda. It hangs on my kitchen wall.]