Not many photos of the grass
- so remiss! So
remiss, because
the earth there wears a festive lace,
it shimmers when a mild breeze blows.
Not many photos of the grass
as it’s not in the line of sight,
effort’s needed to find the grace
that’s not obviously supersized.
Just one photograph of the grass
to snag memory in a snare.
The small always made even less,
ignored as if it isn’t there.
But the grass underfoot makes me ache,
it’s lace, and longing, and heartbreak.
I was in the African savannahs over the holidays. Got lots
of photos of the wildlife, the big 5, the mammals, even the smaller less
drooled-over species like dung-beetles and lizards. The variety and the beauty
of the grasses blew my mind, the delicacy of their seedpods, the
slant of their bending to the winds. I didn’t get too many photographs though, the
breeze was always blurring the picture, when I made the effort to focus in the first
place, that is. Which is odd when you think of it, because surely the star of
the show in the grasslands ought to be the grasses and not befanged and
betrunked animals?
But I got a few photos, and one of them is up there for your consumption,
for whatever it’s worth. Not every magical moment/thing can be clicked and
binary-coded into hard disks and boxed up even if I were to be less remiss –
that too is a life lesson in acceptance.
I also had this vague expectation, fully aware it was wrong
and therefore duly afraid of being disillusioned as well - this mixed and mixed-up
expectation that somehow it would offer me a route to the utter peace, the
aching content that the savannahs of my childhood did. It was a thinly veiled attempt
to return to lapsed spaces and times. Which of course was doomed to fail from
the outset.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t a failure. The landscapes of the East are different from
the West where I spent my childhood - the acacia species, the missing baobabs, the
mango trees laden with a totally different red-magenta fruit. Even some of the
grasses felt different. But that heart-stopping hushed feeling when in the
savannahs, stretching from where your feet are planted to the horizons? Exactly
the same. You breathe deep, and you mentally clasp your hands together in gratitude.
Welcome! to M-i-V in 2018, which is going to be roughly the same as it
was in 2017, but hopefully a little wiser, a little less remiss, with a slightly
clearer focus on the grasses while keeping an eye out for the betrunked and the
befanged in the savannahs of life.
