My Precious School Shoes Poem by Niki Nicholas Nkuna

The night held nothing for me except pitch darkness and thorns
So I insisted to put on my precious school shoes
We gonna visit our relatives and play, not hide and seek
We are hidden by the darkness already, from one another except in familiar voice
Close to the hill is the neighbourhood
Neighbours of myriad kinds, invited and uninvited, encroaching visitations!

Alas, I hear and feel the sound of a crispy crush, soft and short beneath my right shoe
I picked it up, there…, the patch of a black silhouette
That spelt danger a few minutes ago, on touch and bare foot step
I thanked my childish adamant to protect my feet against the thorns of all kinds
That often mushroom over the summer night
For the pregnant scorpion navigating slowly across the lapa
Full of egg venom to kill a human being, would have stung with the full spray
I should be on the death bed by then, wriggling with pain by the movement of the scorpion
So they say, those who know too much after things have happened!

N Nkuna,17 October 2013