AFRICA

 

The actual balloon in this poem.

Africa,

land of my dreams,

landscape of my heart,

filled with all the wild ones

I adore,

we did not meet in person

this lifetime,

though we would have,

had life been more kind.

But my friend

once sailed across the Serengeti

in a hot air balloon

at dawn.

She said she thought of me, then,

and so, in that sense,

I was there,

gazing down on acacia trees,

zebras, elephants walking

ponderously across the plains,

my ears perked to hear

the call of lions

waking in the morning mist.

Her photos of a giraffe's long

eyelashes, taken close up,

and the elephants beneath

the baobab, struck my heart.

She sent me a box of photos
from that trip, to share
her joy with me.

I opened them with reverence,

saw my beloved Africa,

in image after image,

beauty captured through her eyes,
a dream come true

in the golden amber

of an African afternoon.

Some of these photos of the balloon ride can be seen at Lynette Killam's site, The Imaginative Traveler, here. But if you type Africa into the search bar, there is much, much more. Her other site, Imagination Lane , has some great stuff too. Lynette and I have been friends since our sons were seven months old, in baby buggies.......she is the one who urged - insisted - I start a blog, and gave it its name. I am forever grateful for how that opened my poetic doors, connected me with poets all over the world, and unleashed a virtual storm of poems I otherwise would not have written. What a trip it has been!