by Raphael d'Abdon
Friuli blues
chestnut wood
in the dusky fog
jade waters rest
where resins grey
before the rain
there were shadows
across the vines
i wonder how many flowers
fell today
how many petals will travel
with the clouds
the last moment near tears
light floods the hills
of friuli
crows rise to the sky
to never return
their shade specks
a road as empty
as a dry river
where my youth said goodbye
where i planted a pine tree
when i was six
oh corners of my heart where nows and thens touch borders
and sometimes overlap
making visions ravishing
it is hard to ride through this day
moved by memories
that hit me
like storm waves hit a lighthouse
immersed
in the daze of sensual anarchy
i bathe
in the warmth of a blues
hidden in
the mist
of belonging
pretoria, 15 november 2013
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ABOUT THE POET ~
Raphael d’Abdon (PhD) is a poet, scholar, editor and translator, and the author of four collections of poems, "sunnyside nightwalk" (Geko, 2013), "salt water" (Poetree Publishing, 2016), "the bitter herb" (The Poets Printery 2018) and "Selected poems/Poesie scelte (2010 – 2020)" (Besa, 2021, bilingual edition English/Italian). He has done readings in South Africa, Nigeria, Somaliland, India, Italy, Sweden, Canada and the USA, and his poems are published in journals, magazines and anthologies in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Singapore, Palestine, India, Italy, Canada, USA, Australia and the UK. He is the poetry editor of the literary magazine BKO, South Africa’s representative of AHN (Africa Haiku Network), and a founding member of ZAPP (The South African Poetry Project), a research group of the University of South Africa (UNISA) and the University of the Witwatersrand, whose chief aims are to create innovative poetry teaching methodologies, and to instill knowledge, understanding and a love of poetry in young learners.
Last updated September 07, 2022