I married in a moment of emotional dementia
thinking lust was love's cement,
but cement turned into cinderblock,
dragging me down.           

The man who wears my ring
sighs over the TV, cuddles the dog,
and steps blindly over champagne glasses
flung to the floor long ago and ignored.

My love writes me from Africa....


Oh this night!
Our camp sits in the valley below a hillside
over which whirls the wind through vast corridors. 
My trees bend in a decadent dance
to the will of the impending storm.

I feel so charged with life when danger looms
and I have no power over it!

I send you vibrant chills, the trickle
of cleansing rain from your drenched hair
down the curve of your spine,
the caress of full circle water.

Where are you now I wonder?

Lightning brings flash dance movement
highlighting fear on the brows around me,
yet I feel exhilarated, sensual, missing you!
I want to sweep you up like a leaf in the current,
spinning like a Dhervish through the puddles. 


I see myself in the hungry eyes
of children stranded on sidewalks,
curdled in the blood of dropped razors,
and resting in the coil of the hangman's noose.

My house is filled with ash,
remnants of yesterday's hope.
I stand too close to the fire.


My mind sees blank mirrors through vacant windows.
Opening my eyes I see old women in the villages,
toothless men with broken backs.
How I remember my own emptiness
when everything sacred fled.

Then I found you.

You are wild like the wind, like Africa.
I am no longer constrained by carnality.
Your doorways are cosmic and I can
join you in the boundless place.


I pace the hallway thinking of you,
hair loose, unpainted toenails
gripping the pile of my pale carpet.

My restlessness builds, bursts into stars
scattering in pink and yellow sparks.
I inhale them.

Yes I have learned to be free in my own way,
traveling the back roads of mind memory,
catching the tail of the wind.
I am a genie set loose from her bottle,
dreaming of Africa.

I touch you. Can you feel me?


My love waits behind a lonely facade, 
ice castles melting into rivers.
Oh just to know again the cool
when night spreads her fingers
across passionate flesh, wet with desire.

I walk close to the reeds,
feet bathed in dew.
My heart is heavy with remembrance and need.
I am filled with the scent of Africa and you

Only the desert knows such emptiness 
where stars mate in a black blood sky.
The Nile is a woman, sacred and flowing
I wish you could see the orchids and hear the night.


The fevers have returned 
and my body protests this bondage, 
again in my bed.
TV penetrates the wall,
but a late bird sings--a song sent from you?

I take out our photograph;
you kissing my nose,
me wearing your old denim shirt.
Our eyes still brim with the glow
of our lovemaking.

Africa had called us, then this illness
crept like a lion out of the night,
carrying me back into my husband's den,


My love, I have found a sacred hill,
seeking wild orchids on a forested rise
I appeared un-noticed, as a mist.
I have gone there many times ,
slept on the ground in various places,
sat transfixed until day fled  
and the sudden night chilled.
From the pinnacle I can look west 
into the  wavy distance of forever.
Feeling like an eagle
I have stood naked in the night
beneath the fullness of the moon.
When the wind rose and snaked itself about me,
I spread my arms, closed my eyes,
and let Spirit carry me aloft.


I rise with you,
arching into that charred black night, soaring
with your heartbeat hard against mine,
your hand on my breast
and the dew of Africa still damp on my feet.

by Pris Campbell and Tim Derr
©2003

Accepted for publication in Blackmail Press,
Winter 2003

Graphic by Pris Campbell

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