Asphalt smacked the plane hard at touchdown. <br />Bins opened mouths and spat out bags <br />While masks did a string dance in relief; <br />Passengers inch the cabin to terminal – <br />A marathon in the making. <br />Cases anxious, tighten belts and sat <br />On conveyors and pleaded <br />Like prostitutes to be picked up. <br /> <br />On exit, heat corrugates to greet you <br />And a carnival of faces melt with <br />A melee of noises all soprano, <br />All irritatingly out of tune - <br />Buses and cars crippled with age <br />And wearing rustic jackets, <br />Crawl through bottlenecks <br />Rubbing voices to claim your ears. <br /> <br />Shanty Town hides her crow’s-feet with new makeup <br />And “labass” and ganja make friends <br />With fumes to snuff out oxygen. <br />Potholes curse as you dodge <br />Between rejecting their invitation, <br />And toes of road cut nails on concrete edges. <br />Fences fence a touché with zinc tips <br />While dust signal spiral scents <br />To corbeaux swinging. <br /> <br />Gutters call a strike when leaves gather <br />And rain is a sea on road sides <br />Where foreign feelings flit; <br />Sun of the soil returns to a crust crisp <br />As toes trod to land “bake and shark.” <br /> <br />The Industrial Revolution paints <br />White faces black in banks and businesses <br />And affluence is a swizzle of calaloo <br />In different shades as signs of the past sink. <br />And as old fields give way to new <br />And green shoots spring flowers, <br />Fresh scents invade to exorcise the last ghosts.<br /><br />Robert Dummett<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/homecoming-47/
