What was I thinking of (not Tintern
Abbey, that's for sure, more likely you—
mean: we were on honeymoon)

Its pupils (I see them now, violet) were actual holes.

Terrified, one paw raised, trembling on the ciment edge of the threshold, it whispered, down in the snow— blue fluctuating flute.

for Harry Mphanza

We have changed a great many of our colonial place names since independence, but we have kept the name of Livingstone out of a deep respect. —Siloka Mukuni, chief of the Leya People

  At the onset of my ingenious plan, the sun barely shone
            through the mist.
      I struggled with a name to identify the rushes
            of water pouring beside me.

    These days I wake in the used light of someone’s spent life.
     I am often a stranger to myself;
       I have no place of origin, no home.

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration

1. How I Would Paint the Future

A strip of horizon and a figure, 
seen from the back, forever approaching.

Some nights are as black
as belladonna—the black that gathers
at the back of the throat when a boy's
voice falls over your head like a hood:

I pretend a knowing of your skin or,
beneath it, the wells of yourself, over the time it took
you here.

Then we could ride all day and yet 
not reach the farthest edge of our demesne,
its slow hand clap of grouse

I affirm my devotion to your ingenious application, allowing you to track my whereabouts across all devices.