I’d rather taste some honey.” Then she tugged
a branch that housed a yellow swarming hive,
that swayed and twisted, further every push,
until a CRASH! and thousands came alive
to punish their transgressors in the bush!
They sprinted toward the water hole, BLING’s snout
a-leak with grubs that twisted to get out.
16.
That swarm of bees pursued them stride for stride,
and targeted biped assailant who
had roiled their home. Stel’s route had them collide –
this teeming protein mass of rage-bent food –
with mantises and toads who’d quickly prey
upon the black and yellow candy brought!
A scot-free BLING would fetch ditched hive buffet
that Stella’s daring sprint allowed be caught.
With bursting speed, the girl plunged in the pond
and shivered once from chill and once from fear.
She hoped she could aquatically abscond
for long enough to dodge the striped cloud’s pierce.
She stayed submerged till capillaries braced
for shutdown as their oxygen displaced.
17.
For gasps of air, young Stella burst toward sky,
pond droplets flung around as cough and wheeze
erupted, as her lungs had been denied
the air patrolled by horde of angry bees.
Seen crescent moon seemed heaven-sent, the bugs
consumed or fled had clarified its view.
The predators had acted as the thugs
that Stella sought to bid the bees adieu.
Emerging from the stagnant lake, Stel stood
adrip and shivering in zephyr blown
between mahogany and other wood,
wet chill transmitting from her skin to bone.
Despite the cold intensified by wind,
with honey soon, she felt no trace chagrined.
18.
She bounded back past palm and soursop,
saliva massing, thoughts of sweetness soon.
“You read my mind, BLING, nabbed that ’comb. Our crop
makes missed ugali meal feel picayune.”
His jaws held up a gooey golden prize
she took and slowly spun, rotisserie
ambrosial. “Nature’s richness here supplies
all we could want.” She grew dismissory
of wasted drizzle out the bottom once
its sugars raining, runny hit tastebuds.
In comfort, saccharine bliss turns hunters dunce:
staved hunger blunts waste-guilt when drops baste mud.
In moment’s eating rapture Stel felt whole,
no peer approval shading own self’s role.
19.
Next morning’s fog deterring not a whit,
our Stella marched to school with pup in pack,
her fear the day too short to simply sit,
that boredom soon would creep in and hijack
her honest wish she’d learn a thing worthwhile
from spending hours and days and weeks in class.
Contrast this to past two months’ versatile
bush skill-building adventures. Rather, mass
and density, historic dates, and facts
all failed to boost her instinct to survive.
“This memorizing,” she said, “all distracts
me from the time with BLING when I’m alive.”
That day two things would happen unforeseen:
she’d make one friend and start up lifetime dream.
20.
Geography commenced at ten to twelve,
the four bells rang to start the student race
to class, all knew they had short time to shelve
their books and book it to their classroom space.
“Good morning students,” customarily
announced Miss Gumi, tall before the boys
and girls. They stood up and all wearily
announced, “Good morning, Teacher,” standard noise
in classrooms urban, rural, country-wide
each student copied. Stel’s mind was adrift,
in daydream floating through weeks’ hijinks, guide
BLING made her playful, gave her heart a lift.
She couldn’t concentrate on Gumi, who
showed off to class held object hid from view.
21.
“What do you think arrived to class today?”
she asked, referring to the object held.
“A textbook published after ’88?”
joked one boy. “An exam?” another yelled.
She waited. “A real soccer ball for us?”
“A solar charger we can use for phones?”
“A box of candies?” “Pencils?” Soon the fuss
devolved cacophonously. Gumi groaned.
She knew she couldn’t shout them back in line,
but rather wow them toward obedience.
She let the sheet drop, showing faded lime
and periwinkle. “It’s old. See the tints
have faded from green land and ocean blue.”
She held first globe they’d ever chanced to view.
22.
“Our world,” she said, “is vast and stretches past
the forests, farms and fields you know as yours,
we’ve seen on maps that, though we’re unsurpassed
in resources, there’s places like Azores
which, held by Portugal but partly free,
are rich in beauty rather than in stone.
I want you to envision sights to see,
and brought this globe as reference to the Rhône,
Zambezi, Volta, Nile. It educates
you Tanzanian future pioneers
of veldt and jungle, Asia, Europe, Strait
of Hormuz, inland seas and sands, Algiers,
I care not where you end your journeys, but
implore you venture far away from hut
23.
in which your family makes its home. Your birth
was likely under roof you now repair.
Go forth! Uncover each of your own worth
discovering the world. Become aware
of who and what your neighbors are, and why
they act one way and you believe them strange.
Our cultures differ, Paris and Shanghai
could never prosper if both rearranged
their streets and people, let alone swapped out
entire populations, one for one.
There is no guiding road or central route,
you’ll never know you’re done, or lost, or won.
I know you’re young, your vigor and your vim
should guide you.” Silence fell. Her passioned hymn
24.
was given time to percolate through head.
It wasn’t too far-fetched for Gumi to
give urging sermon snippets, guidance spread
to pupils, countering school’s gloomy pew.
Last month nonsensically she’d decried rules
the state imposed restricting natural things,
in tirade how tribes ought to own all jewels
(ore, plant, and animal) their homelands bring.
“This globe,” she said, “is but a picture’s ink,
washed-out facsimile of what is real.
And finding that takes more than space to think,
it takes your presence. Rivers’ vast appeal
can only be experienced afloat.
’Tween bookish grasp and body’s lay wide moat.”
25.
Miss Gumi then confessed, “I have some fear
of challenging you youth this way. I’ve led
a lucky life to here from old Zaire,
saw things when young that frightened, and I fled.
Once refugee, now citi
zen. My man
as you know’s trained safari guide, we go
from Cameroon’s reserve Campo Ma’an
to old home’s Ma’iko, to Kitulo
in southwest highlands. Foreign clients take
him out to translate nature. When there’s space
I come along. It’s helped me to awake
to treasures sitting right here in our face.
So even if your family can’t afford
far travel, still know life’s to be explored.”
26.
This sentiment stretched Stel’s smile Cheshire-near
as if she’d heard the words she’d waited for.
Imagination leaped to far frontier
that Gumi beckoned, hooked by dreams offshore.
Stel looked through glassless window frame toward corn,
past pupil peers, toward where Earth curled away.
What wonders only loved by better born
lay past thousand horizons worlds arrayed?
When mind’s eye stupefaction ceased and Stel
returned her sight to corn-fed corneas
they focused on a penciled caravel
drawn by her deskmate’s hand, adorning the
lined composition notebook space reserved
for copying down spoon-fed fact preserves.
27.
Sketched daydream vessel’s shipwright was Abu.
His family moved nearby sometime this year.
Line-drawn detail suggested through and through
he’d witnessed some aquatic hemisphere.
She thought he’d worn a fez, but blinked and *poof*
mirage. Perhaps that travel bug? Why had
she missed his doodling before? Aloof
and bookish, he’d not mixed with other lads.
He looked from sketch to her as if she’d asked
the moment Stella looked across at him,
in mutuality of something masked,
some hoped duality to spark their vim.
Shared hint of interest in the world at large
empowered Stel to take up outreach charge.
28.
“Hello, my friend!” our heroine called when
the bells to end their class began to ring.
“Are you from China? Near Tiananmen?
I hear these days we’ve migrants from Peking.”
Abu was startled thrice. The first word, ‘friend’
had not been said to him since he arrived
to village from whole wide world’s furthest end.
The thought of having one was joy revived.
A second startle struck when question mark
was used in Stella’s interrogative.
He’d not been asked a thing since family parked
in this odd place. His kin spurned, mocked: the gift
of being youngest. Third, at core she meant
Abu appeared to come from Orient!
29.
“Not quite. You’ve mixed up your geography.
You’re thinking of the hats that farmers wear
to plant their rice beside the great Yangtze.
Instead, I’m from a place where morning prayer
is routine, so the bells we hear at school
repeatedly remind me that I miss
the days I once embraced in Istanbul.”
While listening to Abu reminisce,
young Stella squirmed at being proven wrong,
she hoped she hadn’t bungled friendship’s chance
by thinking Abu’s heritage Hong Kong.
“Apologies! I’m sorry. Would perchance
forgiveness be in store?” the girl replied,
“Your drawing shows you’ve got a view worldwide.”
30.
“I dream escape. Spain, Sweden, Suriname,
pick anywhere besides the here and now.”
“Why?” “Why not? Dream I’ll see Dar es Salaam,
or Far East that you mentioned, like Macau
is loads more interesting than lessons here.
It’s like Miss Gumi says—there’s worlds out there.”
“And you know… how?” Stel asked, tone kind toward peer
to not appear too skeptical. “I’ll share,
but not right here in class. Let’s say lifelong
I’ve been in flux, in transit,” Ab replied.
“Okay… forget it. Rather, come along
to meet a second friend I often hide
while bound in class. We’re hoping you’re our third!”
She showed him BLING outside, awaited word.
31.
Abu, a bit like ghost, swayed to and fro
atop his lanky legs as if the wind
could flip him either way, as it does clothes,
considering while Stella, hopeful, grinned.
This boy could have been raised where cuneiform
was not an ancient, dead, forgotten script,
and yet his look at school was uniform,
normalcy’s carbon copy: backpack zipped,
a woolen sweater frayed below his neck
its navy blue to contrast khaki shorts,
on which were several daubs of muddy fleck
from football falls. Stel thought she glimpsed a quartz
or milky pendant hung beneath his maw,
a necklace carved as crescent moon and claw.
32.
“At home,” Abu began, “I’m one of eight.
We once lived well in Syria, till war
broke out in Lebanon, and our estate
became a looters’ target, laws ignored.
They ousted us from title to the land,
we fled to Turkey. Left in foreignness,
jobs, food, and shelter scarce, we’d not withstand
for long. So we came here. Now sore in this
is me, forgotten as my family copes
by squatting on some land and planting crops.”
Stel felt familiarities evoked
in lamentation life’s but farming ops.
“My parents told of past, but still remained
attached to story royalty’s ingrained.
33.
It’s all affected me since I was young.
My duty’s to become a worldly sheikh,
ourselves across the world.” Right then, heartbreak,
as far as it could be so felt by child
enveloped Stella, who had long without
a standard parent ever reconciled,
no mother-, father-figure. Left in doubt,
she there, with Abu, jointly understood
both longed in ways to see the wider world,
both sought in ventures meaning, wondered could
both forge their self in wilder-ness? Thoughts swirled
above their heads as if they’d conjured clouds
of dreams between them. Kids’ dreams lack the shrouds
34.
adults’ experience and fear insert.
Intoxicating childhood fantasy
led Stel to be a smidgen bold, assert,
“Then join us. BLING and I began to free
ourselves adventuring.” Her head felt light.
What if winds couldn’t sway Abu as seemed?
Her simple act of being so forthright
was tinged by risk that, offer unredeemed
from girl in search of true companionship,
would crush her confidence like bully’s punch.
“You know, I heard a lonesome banyan strip
is hidden – hidden! – in the woods. At lunch
tomorrow, let’s go bushwhack.” Being new,
to children ’twas enough to go pursue.
35.
By time that BLING and Stella made it home,
old Grandmum, deep asleep, was unperturbed.
She’d never made a point of trying to comb
outdoo
rs for Stella. Picture this suburb
as village shamba nestled in the hills,
with stick-mud homes spaced so farms intercede,
for agriculture was what paid the bills
since jobs weren’t to be found, or even leads.
On side of path began a taller wood,
which swaddled mountain midriff, where the wind
blew pines to flex like bamboo where they stood;
foreboding sentries when the sunlight thinned.
Grandmum ensconced herself in home, alone,
with breaks for Sunday church. She liked the known.
36.
Her somnolence inured to help Stel’s team,
arriving sans the stress of discipline
atop their minds, for Grandmum was adream
and showed all signs that she would miss it when
they entered whether loud-toed or soft-heeled.
BLING dug his bed into imagined leaf,
as dogs are wont to do. Scratched earth did yield
one comfy convex sleeping nook beneath
Stel’s hand. Perhaps we’re opposite of dogs,
who let imagined objects contradict
their eyes and act as asked by body’s logs
encoded for survival. Nature’s tricked
at least one species with genetic code,
that, passed from kin to kin, will not erode.
37.
Since finding BLING, Stel often slipped to sleep
in minutes, zonked from having filled the day.
Nor usually would BLING long count the sheep,
who’d straightaway show up in dream as prey.
Yet readying for bed, an air remained
unsettling and incomplete. Both stirred
instead of nodding gently off, they strained
to shake the air that made them feel interred.
Stel felt like she’d come close to friend breakthrough,
to finding part of her reflected. Lack
of parents, normal now, still oft ached through
to amplify her fear folks would draw back.
Attachment anchors missing as a child
nagged Stel as worries friends too’d self-exile.
38.
The dog, meanwhile, stirred, pacing thrice an hour.
He traced the border of the room, patrolled
his territory for what might have soured
their vain attempts to enter Nod’s stronghold.
“Hey BLING,” said Stella quietly, to test
if pup was subject to unease’s haunt,
“you think our Abu’s different from the rest?
He doesn’t feel quite human yet. A jaunt
is what we need to really verify
if he’s as wedded to adventure as
the two of us! We’ve got to clarify
he’s got the mettle that we hope he has.”
BLING acted like he understood her cause:
he perked, stopped, shook, and stretched from ears to claws.