holeinthehedgerow

[holeinthehedgerow]

Pit Ponies

I found myself learning about these pit ponies,

How they worked down in these coal mines.

How they were born down there,

In the dark.

How they lived and worked down there,

And how they died down there,

In the dark.

Foals pulled coal carts in tunnels,

And slept covered in soot,

In the dark.

And how they never knew the sun,

Or the way they were meant to be,

In the light.

I found myself thinking about these pit ponies,

Wondering am I so messed up?

That I relate to them.

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[holeinthehedgerow]

My lips are levies. The levies have been breached. My mouth is New Orleans. I am drowning. Not every day is like this.

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[holeinthehedgerow]

You know,

Deep down,

On the inside,

Each one of us,

I know the truth,

I know what you are,

You are just a skeleton,

Disguising yourself as a human.

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[holeinthehedgerow]

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them"

- Annie Dillard

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[holeinthehedgerow]

A beautiful and heartfelt piece

"Heaven."

I went to the post office, with my creme envelope addressed in cursive licked shut.

I asked the old man for a stamp of 2 aanas.

“To Where, beta?” he asked.

“Heaven.” I said.

“Heaven Garden Society?”

“No. Just heaven.”

He chuckled like I had made a sexist “Indian woman belongs in the kitchen” joke.

He suddenly didn't find it funny anymore when he saw the cursive letters on the delicate paper, which laughed at him instead. “Heaven.”

The paper chuckled like I made an “Indian men will never learn.” joke.

He looked back at his peers who were also perplexed by this. They couldn't decide whether to make another sexist joke about Indian women and their IQs or quit their jobs, they were simply not paid enough for this.

He finally gathered the cursive letters of his voice, “But beta, how do you know this person isn't in hell?”

The office broke out in the typical middle aged men tired of their life type of laughter, which lightened the mood, but you could still whiff the strain in the air. 

I let out a breath of irritation. And took a breath of courage.

“I'm writing to my father. My father who always had a story to tell, and jokes that only he would laugh at. Who loved stringing his words into colourful garlands, his sentences. Who believed everyone who loves, is to be loved, and everyone who doesn’t, is to be loved too. Who would often fall asleep on the creaking mahogany living room sofa with a book on his chest, and let the words against his heart speak to him. Who would steal the sweets tucked away safely in the cupboard next to the puja. And laugh nervously when caught. 

They have a special place for people who stole sweets in heaven, Uncle.”

You could hear the most manliest man in the room, with a moustache that grew long and thick, curved at the ends, tall and broad shouldered, who usually had a stern look on his face, weeping like a little girl. This time I laughed at my own sexist joke.

I walked out of the office, hopped on my cycle, and stopped to look back at the room full of men, who were still trying to wrap their heads around the cloud of grief I left, but only they were smiling.

Smiling in pain, for me. Smiling in nostalgia for their own fathers that they once lost. Smiling in love, for me. For leaving them grateful, after years of feelings of nothingness. 

To the girl who lost her father today, I hope they find a way to deliver the letters you will address to heaven.

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[holeinthehedgerow]

The Bats of Senegal

Every morning, I wake up and sweep the bat shit- or guano to be more technical- out of my hut. This process has become something of an art form for me, an art form that I have perfected. I know where the bats like to hang out (I mean hang out in a very literal bat like sense), such as off the nail I hang my hat, or along the string I hang my dirty laundry on, or at the base of a world map I have strung up against a wall. I visit these bat rest stops daily, and I sweep the little piles of shit that have accumulated overnight into the center of my hut. At times, when I’ve been away for a few days, I arrive home to find the little piles as little mountains, which will then require a deeper more thorough sweeping.

            The wind here, in this corner of the world, flows assiduously from east to west. I’ve never seen it flow any other way. The wind blows across the Sahara Desert, across the Sahel, out into the ocean, sometimes it carries massive walls of sand and dust with it, and I’ve been told the dust particles will ultimately pick up water droplets out on the ocean and dump them in the form of a hurricane season along the eastern coast of my home, North America. This makes me homesick each morning as I sweep, from my hut’s eastern door to the one on the west wall, following the channel of the ever-present breeze that keeps me cool at night. I use the air flow like a wizard to help drift the dust and bat shit out of my little hut. I like to think this dust I sweep along the mud floor and out my west door gets picked up by the wind and finds its way to my home thousands of miles away in the form of a cold autumn rain.

            In Jaxanke, the language I speak in this village, the word for west is Tiloolaata, “where the sun sleeps”.

            I have a peaceful relationship with the bats in my hut. Even just one bat sighted in the home of a typical American would likely leave them terrorized until it is found and exterminated. But for me here, where I am constantly surrounded by the ethereal little demons, I’ve grown used to their presence. Despite their constant proximity, I don’t think I’ve ever actually touched one. However, I often feel their presence, in the form of a slight breeze from their tiny wings brushing the hairs on my skin as they fly around my body. The bats are like water, or maybe more like air, wrapping themselves around things with such unimaginable flawless dexterity, they never seem to touch anything. They move like shadows. I’ve been told they can catch and eat a thousand mosquitoes an hour. I like to imagine what the sound of the buzzing mosquitos’ wings, that sound which irritates me every night, must sound like to the delicate ears of a bat, how it must guide the little demons right to them. The fact that the irritating ringing buzz in my ears may well be the mosquitoes undoing brings me solace. Each morning, I sweep up thousands of mosquitoes in the form of guano and ship it off with the western wind, where it follows the sun back home.

            I’ve learned to never go to the bathroom during dawn or dusk. This is when the bats commute in and out of my toilet hole in which they live.

            At night I bathe myself, with water from a bucket I carried earlier that day atop my head a hundred feet from a well, an uncapped well that I drew the water out of with a rusted squealing pulley. As I bathe myself with the water left out to be warmed by the Sahelian sun all day, dumping it over my head, the bats swirl and dance around me, plucking mosquitoes out of the air, guarding me from their bloodthirst, and fanning me dry with tiny wings.

            The northern wall of my hut is painted black, and there is a grid drawn in with chalk, rows and columns and squares with big Xs crossing them out, counting down days until future days. I have lived here for seven-hundred and thirty days, twenty-four months, two years. I avoid counting the days. I have a fear that the days I will miss the most are the ones I disrespected with a big chalk X. The days I waited to have ended. I try to stay present while I am in my village, but thoughts of the future ambush me constantly. Thoughts of cheese, hot showers, clean bed sheets, and sitting on cushions. Thoughts of protein, hygiene, good sleep, and comfort.

            I know I will miss village life. I will miss living in a place without time. Where the only time is the position of the sun. It awakens in the morning in the east and goes to sleep in the evenings in the west. The only calendar here is the faces of the moon. In Jaxanke, the word for month is Carro, which literally means “moon”.

            I fear that this chapter of my life, my Peace Corps experience, when all of it is said and done and I return home, that the things I miss the most won’t be the extravagant grand moments of my time here, but rather the simple and mundane. Such as the cracking of peanut shells with my host sisters in the shade of the peanut shelling machine, a machine we simply never use because then we’d have nothing to do. What I’m going to miss are the moments which so easily pass by me unnoticed unless I am actively there. I fear the days I miss the most will be the days on the calendar I count off until the next time I get to eat a cheeseburger. What I will miss are the moments that fleetingly get passed by time; unnoticed and at times not even remembered, but simply seen as features of a chapter in my life. Features like being fanned dry by bat wings, carrying water atop my head, or watching the sun go to sleep on the horizon.

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[holeinthehedgerow]

Wow

Beautiful Disaster

Oh my darling, try not to fret.

I still have not forgotten you yet.

You're sitting cross-legged inside my skull.

I tried cutting you out, but my knife's too dull.

#poetry

[holeinthehedgerow]

my messages aren’t going through to your dms but i just wanted to let you know the writing on your blog is phenomenal!

Thanks for your kind words friend 🧡 🥺

[holeinthehedgerow]

What am I Supposed to Be?

What are you supposed to be?

You aren’t supposed to be anything.

You’re supposed to be an upright ape,

Foraging for berries somewhere in the Sahel.

And I’m sorry you’re a thing asking that question.

I’m sorry you’re a thing asking anything at all.

I’m sorry you’re a thing that knows it’s a thing.

I’m a thing too,

Made from stardust and dreams.

I know how confusing that can be.

Being a thing with more thoughts than stars,

Being a thing that never asked to be,

For what seems like no reason at all.

A thing that never asked to be anything,

And yet here it is,

Filling a vacuum of space and time and thought,

Asking the question,

What am I supposed to be?

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[holeinthehedgerow]

Eclipsed

Isn’t it funny,

How the sun makes my day

Everyday?

And how it lights up my world,

And warms my everything.

How I spin around her

A thousand nights an hour.

How I see her everywhere,

Yet never have I looked at her,

For fear of her fire.

How I feel her light

On the face of the moon.

How she blocks out my stars

And turns my sky blue.

How I watch her come,

And I watch her go.

But never have I ever do I,

Wonder if I know,

If again I’ll see her in my sky.

Or will I stay eclipsed forever,

By the shadows of it all,

And never again will I ever,

Forget that final nightfall.

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[holeinthehedgerow]

Joanies Café

Joanies Café

Burned down the other day,

Only it’s a bike shop now,

An antique store before that,

But before then it was Joanies Café.

Where in the twilight of my youth I used to play,

On the first of my Friday nights away.

Where at a dimly lit cobweb-laden counter

I used to eat and drink for free,

No wonder the place went out of business,

Never saw anyone that came pay.

Even the cats got free room and board,

Joanie had a love for any stray,

And if it weren’t for their paw prints in the dust,

You would get lost in that labyrinth

Of antique oddities covered in must and rust,

And mannequins with their clothes half stitched,

And old portraits with their eyes bewitched.

In the attic that was said to be haunted we’d meet,

Lit by ethereal rays of moonlight through cracks,

And by the flickering of an old whale oil lamp,

Matt would sing,

I’d play the guitar,

Karen would be on the cello,

Evelyn would write poems,

While Aiden just read anything,

And everyone had a thing they’d do,

And the ghosts and shadows were our audience.

Joanies Café burned down a long time ago,

When all the strays found new homes,

Leaving behind tracks you could see from the moon.

Then the spiders’ homes were all swept up,

And the paw prints got all dusted away,

And then this bike shop on South Street,

Burned down the other day.

https://holeinthehedgerow.com/2024/03/31/joanies-cafe/

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[holeinthehedgerow]

"And the one’s

Turn into two’s and three’s"

Wandering Eye

A lot of people think Maybe they are the one It’s easy to believe After you break a couple hearts But I’ve outlived a few And the one’s Turn into two’s and three’s The spellbinding hole in your heart Never touched a golden day in the light Never kissed by drops of sunlight A world inside a drop of dew Never have known the desert of despair Of a wandering woman’s heart

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[holeinthehedgerow]

my skull has hinges screwed in

You sound very open minded

#poetry

[holeinthehedgerow]

The Destiny of My Poems

I often wonder about the destiny of my poems as I write them.

I contemplate burning them,

Before having to relive the shame of having written them.

Often, I just forget them,

Or I hide them by mistake,

In pages of journals, and in the margins of books,

Or I leave them etched into walls or tree trunks,

But most often in some unknowable chain of synapses

That I forgot to remember.

Writing them in sand, and then sweeping them away.

I remember them, I remember them less, I forget them,

I am saddened to have forgotten them.

Some I forget on purpose.

But then I often stumble upon them.

And like how the petrichor of the first rain after a long time dry,

Reminds you of something once so familiar,

That I still somehow forgot.

How it feels to walk outside and be utterly drenched.

I find myself reliving past lives and versions of myself,

That I had forgotten to forget.  

https://holeinthehedgerow.com/2024/03/28/the-destiny-of-my-poems/

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[holeinthehedgerow]

She brought out the best in me

Made me a better person

It was exhausting

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[holeinthehedgerow]

Crepitus

I’m not supposed to know the word crepitus,

Let alone the sound,

Or the grating feeling of it in my hands.

I didn’t know what to say to the woman collapsed on the lawn,

So “one second” I uttered like an idiot as I passed,

To this sack of red liquid and tubes

That killed itself but had forgotten to die.

God could come down and plug that hole with its finger,

But they’d still be done and gone.

I don’t have time to question the ethics of keeping this alive.

But I will never unsee the last thing they ever saw,

A photo floating in red beside a gun

Of them and a young man about my age.

And they about the age of my dad.

And now I will never unhear the cacophonous sounds of bones

When trying to push him back together.

A poem about a particularly troubling call working as a paramedic

https://holeinthehedgerow.com/2024/03/22/crepitus/

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[holeinthehedgerow]

"The god I didn't believe in laughed."

7 minutes ago, I caught myself praying for a home that doesn't crumble like mine.

And I don't believe in god.

6 minutes ago, I fought back tears, because my mother couldn't.

The tears, that could once fall with liberty.

5 minutes ago, My father swallowed the words that he didn't dare say out loud.

No one grieved the sentences that never existed.

4 minutes ago, I googled how to stop my hands from shaking.

Google only told me I had the Bubonic Plague and that I was going to die.

3 minutes ago, The clock couldn't be ticking any slower.

How I will always have a love-hate relationship with time.

2 minutes ago, the world was still.

Unknowing of the disasters that took our three-bedroom flat by storm.

1 minute ago, I anticipated my world tumbling again.

"It would get easier now, right?" The god I didn't believe in laughed.

Now.

Like the storm was never there. 7 minutes, 5 stages of grief. It all ends in acceptance.

Until next time.

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