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## Raphael D'Abdon

### Friuli Blues

Chestnut wood
pale in the dusky fog
jade waters rest
where resins grey

before the rain
there were shadows
across the vines
i wonder how many flowers
fell today
how many petals will travel
with the clouds

the last moment near tears
late light floods the hills
of friuli
crows rise to the sky
to never return

their shade specks
a road as empty
as a dry river
where my youth said goodbye
where i planted a pine tree
when i was six

oh corners of my heart where nows and thens touch borders
and sometimes overlap
making visions ravishing
it is hard to ride through this day
stirred by memories and emotions
that hit me
like storm waves hit a lighthouse
immersed
in the daze of sensual anarchy
i bathe
in the warmth of a blues
hidden in
the mist
of belonging

Pretoria, 15 November 2013

## Good Fathers

i drop my daughter at school
kiss her good day
and head back to the car

an old indian man is walking slowly behind it
he carries a stick
"can you give me a lift, son?" he asks
"sure, sir"

he laboriously gets into the car
as i crank up the engine

"you see that big house in front of the school, son?
that's my daughter's house.
she's director of human resources at shell
and my son is c.e.o. at the water engineering department in durban"

pride oozing from his watery eyes

"you raised good kids, sir. what's the secret?"
"i sat every night after work with them to help with the homework
in the weekend i took them to sport
or to the park to make them run and play.
i played soccer for south Africa in my youth,
although my legs are weary now"

i stop by the robot to drop him off
he opens the door and says:
"it was my birthday yesterday"
"it was my father's birthday too"
"thank you for the lift, son"
"it was a pleasure, sir"

smiling
he sheds a tear and greets me
holding his stick with a trembling hand.

"what's your name, sir?" i ask
"sam"
"goodbye, mr sam"
"goodbye, son"

i hit the road and i too shed a few tears
thinking about good fathers,
hoping to be one myself

thinking about mine
so many rivers and mountains away from me,

i play a cd he gave me when i left home

his eyes in the rear view mirror

for a moment, i don't feel alon

Rietvlei, 4 september 2014

## An Unfolding Miracle

I have listened to the words of sages
and followed awkward truthtellers
footprints where the snow
has iced
traversing a river
that never existed
i can feel the hands of healers
weaving upon
our massacred earth

their eyes write pages
of brighter days

the human world
is breathless

a better humanity
glistens inside
what is felt by many
as an unfolding miracle

Pretoria, 2 April 2015 (written after the massacre at the [Garissa University in Kenya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garissa_University))

## Beginnings

At home
still
thinking of home

hush
where springs become rivers
rivers become bays
bays become oceans
and oceans become
dreams
moonlight
a star dies
a story rises

imaginary time
memories
images
words
tunes
signs

beginnings
of new journeys

**Raphael d'Abdon** is Lecturer at the English Studies Department of the University of South Africa. In 2013 he published the book *Marikana. A Moment in Time*, his debut poetry collection *Sunnyside Nightwalk*, and was featured at the "Poetry Africa" festival. He has published several articles on spoken word poetry and his most recent publication, "Reconceptualizing Poetry as a Multimodal Genre" (Newfield & d'Abdon), will appear in the *TESOL Quarterly*.

[dabdor@unisa.ac.za](mailto:dabdor@unisa.ac.za)