NaPoWriMo 04

On the road South
houses begin brick,
but climate dries
and poverty grows,
and we see it
in the homes
people build.

On the land’s
granite spine
an unseen boundary
is crossed.
Now it’s mud-brick
and thatched roofs.
Neat villages, houses
all aligned West-faced
to Indonesia,
ancestral homeland.

Now in Bara land
with the forests
burned off,
tin-shack territory.

Then, wood walls,
in the roadside dirt,
ever-present chickens.

Finally, the stretch
between Toliara
and Ifaty, poorest
windowless scraps
of boards and plastic,
dirt roads – black mud
in wet season,
strung-out huts
overlook the barrier
reef, and the blue
Indian Ocean.

Colin Will
04/04/2013