the journey home

a poem

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A little backstory: I wrote this poem on one of my last trips back to school from Johanessburg to Mbabane. I had been taking the five-hour bus ride for over six years, yet I hadn't realized how comforted I was by the view and the scenery around me. When I get sentimental, I come back to this poem to reminisce about this place that I got to call home.

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I could trace the highveld's silhouette with my fingernail

Upon the glass window.

The way the hills folded over each other,

Draped like cascading curtains set in stone

Glazed in patchwork green

It's the kind of landscape people write pages about.

The dark blue sky melted into the sun's last yellow embers

I knew this evening gradient well.

Briefly, the ground lay flat

Stretched taut

And patches of golden dry grass faded hopefully into the distance.

Trees sprouted from every crevice of the rolling hills

Yet from here, they were no different from the bushes.

Only when the horizon pushed itself into the spotlight

And the trees approached us

Growing daunting and prolific

Concealing a lifetime of mysteries in the rings of its bark

Were my eyes drawn to the tip of the window sill.

As the meandering roads led us closer to dusk

Deep oranges held onto the corners of the earth

And alight to match its loving glow

Comes streetlights and homes settling into another rhythm.

Every once in a while,

A fire would peak its glaring eyes from the gaps of the billowing wood

Their presence, small and silent

Came like a prayer

A symbol of life and light in the somber blues and greys.

Time slowed and a cloud of silence unraveled over the valley

As we ascended

Into the solace of the mountains

Into another world.