my sweet friend

All the way home I am paying attention to the trees. These are my champions, companions, and friends. The morning after disembarking from far-off chilly-cold and fairytale Berlin I was scattering the pawpaw seeds from my first breakfast in a scarred yoghurt tub in the sun to dry: in order to make more trees.

I rode home on the back of a bike and feeling the cool night time breeze in my ears. We rode past Ghana International Airport, where a few of the letters have dropped out so that it says Ghana Inter nal Airport. You could fly to Kumasi. You could fly to Ga. If they only had an airport, in Ga.

As we were approaching my friend’s house where I am staying I leaned forward in the highway breeze and said to my ride, What is something you really like — about ME. He said, steering suavely, “You are beautiful.” He said it vehemently but without any hurry. I felt filled with wellbeing, and dropped down under the spreading trees where I walk home and as I walked up around the curving nearby street a man who guards the block of flats painted blindingly white stuck his head out of his tiny guard hutch to greet me. “Hello!” I said. When I passed last week he was hanging on the barred gate and I had the impulse but didn’t say, Don’t they let you out? Should I free you from there? because it seemed to me so amusing. I am easily amused and it’s something I have held onto. Now in the thrum of the generators he said, My sweet friend. How are you. Long time. And I said, Chairman. Long time. How be. The night rose up around us like a steam built from all our bodies and their exhalations and their sleep. I love to be free and alive at such times…. Don’t you.