Non-Stop Confrontations With Grace Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

I sit in the dark looking into space,
Counting the days on this journey,
To the panorama that is out in space,
And then wonder why I have the privilege,
To count these confrontations with grace,
Which are meant to be encounters in time.

For when I was supposed to do one thing,
I did another with audacity of a seahorse,
That jumps up and down and goes deeper,
And deeper in the corals where it thinks,
It is the most beautiful of all.

I sit in temperatures of grace that tell,
Of my being incognito for I have not joined,
Life on the center stage so that the spotlight,
Is right on me on this first act of love,
Where every source of the feeling that hits me,
Tells me I have a pride that I need to bend,
And twist on this parade of my ignorance.

I ask why this attack on a spirit weak and gaunt,
And then I get agitated for I do not get an answer,
Knowing that I have been told that man is weak,
Ever since I began hearing sounds of roosters,
And print them into memory for my grandmother,
Prayed at three in the morning always,
Calling for grace from a god she called,
In Zulu words that begin in 'So.'

I feel my feet walking on the gravel roads,
Early in the morning with her shadow following
The moonlight, in the west telling me it is time,
For this grace that got us walking is the same,
As the one that keeps us breathing.

I know I have had confrontations with grace,
For the spirit yelled asking questions hidden,
Inside my person for I had come to know,
That is is in confrontations that the anger,
Is spilled out into the open and heard by grace,
And then brought back calmly in an answer like,
A whisper of someone far away, asking me what it
Is I am saying, for the answers are clear.

I have seen a movie of my life played out,
In a screen unseen as each elder who gave me,
Counsel I despised stood on a spotlight,
And said words that answer each and every one,
Of these confrontation with grace, for they
Were unforgettable encounters that bore the
Truth, of yesterday's thoughts.