Tanzania 2007
By Diane Josephy Peavey

Tanzania spills across space
And memory….
It is sounds that startle you
From sleep.
Filling early morning silence
With urgency and song,
Melodies, crackles, tappings and cries
That demand you abandon
What is expected
And begin again.

Tanzania is endless landscapes
That crowd the eyes,
Fill the soul
A place of vast plains
Grasslands
Woods
Kopjes
Faraway hills that stretch
Into forever
Then sink into distant horizons.

Tanzania is a place of wildlife migrations
Trees heavy with birds
A place of lists
Of numbers you recite-
Six elephants, twenty impala, eleven giraffe-
As if this attempt at order
Will capture the enormity,
Imprint the scene
No camera lens can capture.

Tanzania is a place of intense sun and heat
That traps you
Between earth and sky,
Breathless
It is a place of laughing
Gentle warriors, guides, new friends
Who leave you wishing
You spoke
Kiswahili
To tell them they have opened
Your eyes
To tell them they have opened
Your heart

Tanzania is a place of surprising
Intimacies
Within the space
Is the moment
The bewitching gloriousa superba
The intriguing whistling thorn
The secrets of the olpul
A single sleek impala buck
The alluring lilac breasted roller
A lion cub
With head cocked
Studying his reflection
In a quiet pool at dusk.

Tanzania is a place of contrasts
Innocence and cunning
Harmony and disturbance
Shrieks and silence

Another lion cub playfully
Tossing the leg of
A ravaged zebra
Through lush green grasses

A wildebeest and unborn baby
Mother split open
Lying on a hillside
In the searing noonday sun
The gentle shade of
The deadly yellow fever tree

The sensual rounds and tear streaked walls of
The kopje
Lush trees pushing through
Its crevices
A poem at its heart that
Floats forever in the wind

Tanzania is a place of
360 degrees
You hold it in the palm
Of your hand
Watch it spill out across
Landscape and memory

It is a place you cannot
Ignore
A place in which you are hushed
As you seize its soul
And burn it
Into your own

Then holding onto a wisp
Of breeze
“At Last”
Before falling
Down, down
Into inescapable yellow
Pools,
Lion eyes
Watching, waiting
To pull you
Into deep and
Unanticipated mysteries