In grasp - from this spring in Cape Town

Vines spread and branched like veins

woven through the dead tree’s black wood.

They snapped with pulling. Tough remains

still snaked in the wood and worms

and California soil. Wet coolness, closer to the root

the vines glowed vivid purple.

Evening comes to this city in a gush of blue fog,

thick enough to forget yourself, if eight hours at a computer

don’t wipe memory away. Bending toward home,

I am unlearning eye contact

because looking up can mean opening yourself

or your legs and slithering voices have followed me home

more than once. Harsh voices come from bloody-eyed children

in a dull cicada buzz: “Hey, hey sister.”

When stroking eyes and hands are enough

to wrench a body apart,

I look for myself the palm of my hand,

or what it can hold. Pinecones still woods-smelling,

a three-legged plastic giraffe, a shell

rainbow-streaked like an oil slick.

My mother’s meditation stones are hard and smooth,

like the solid layer my heart is trying to grow.

Call me back, graspable things.

When the night is a riot of throbbing bass and anger,

my eyes close to a stone silence,

stone in hand. All heavy limbs long to grow

thick at the root,

burn a color more brilliant.