What the World Still Sends

Two short poems tracing one woman's crossing of South Africa, west to east. A rainbird's call reaches her indoors while she works, unbidden - a sound she has heard before, decades ago in Pietermaritzburg, Roger beside her. She packs the last box for Durban already knowing her destination, not yet knowing the door has opened ahead of schedule, or that deception waits three days into the east, and hardship not far behind it.

Newly arrived at a counter on the other side of the country, a goose and then a crow come to her door in turn - the goose holding a silence as an elder would, the crow reading the frame as though the whole distance she has travelled is already accounted for in its eye. Neither poem settles into comfort or warning alone. Each simply insists that something is being carried across, and that she is being watched while it arrives.