Asphalt smacked the plane hard at touchdown.
Bins opened mouths and spat out bags
While masks did a string dance in relief;
Passengers inch the cabin to terminal –
A marathon in the making.
Cases anxious, tighten belts and sat
On conveyors and pleaded
Like prostitutes to be picked up.
On exit, heat corrugates to greet you
And a carnival of faces melt with
A melee of noises all soprano,
All irritatingly out of tune -
Buses and cars crippled with age
And wearing rustic jackets,
Crawl through bottlenecks
Rubbing voices to claim your ears.
Shanty Town hides her crow’s-feet with new makeup
And “labass” and ganja make friends
With fumes to snuff out oxygen.
Potholes curse as you dodge
Between rejecting their invitation,
And toes of road cut nails on concrete edges.
Fences fence a touché with zinc tips
While dust signal spiral scents
To corbeaux swinging.
Gutters call a strike when leaves gather
And rain is a sea on road sides
Where foreign feelings flit;
Sun of the soil returns to a crust crisp
As toes trod to land “bake and shark.”
The Industrial Revolution paints
White faces black in banks and businesses
And affluence is a swizzle of calaloo
In different shades as signs of the past sink.
And as old fields give way to new
And green shoots spring flowers,
Fresh scents invade to exorcise the last ghosts.
Robert Dummett
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/homecoming-47/
