The Home I Had Forgotten To See Poem by Mpho Leteng

I have walked these dusty pathways barefoot,
until the calluses on my heels forgot the bite of the earth.
To me, the Chobe River is just water flowing
a liquid boundary, a predictable neighbor,
spilling carelessly into the backyard of my days.

The elephants are merely grey boulders blocking traffic,
the fish eagle's cry just an unrequested alarm clock,
and the sun setting behind the riverbank,
simply the closure of another routine shift.
We wrap our blessings in the cloth of the mundane.
We look at the extraordinary and call it ordinary,
because familiarity has a way of stealing the shine from gold.
But then they arrive.
They come from far lands with wide eyes and racing pulses,
holding their breath as the water turns to melted copper.
I see a woman clutch her chest when the giant trunk breaks the surface,
I watch a man wipe a tear as the night sky opens its chest of stars,
and suddenly, the air grows thick with their unspoken dreams.
They pay in heavy currencies just to look at my horizon.

They find a sanctuary where I only found a chore.
In their gasps, I hear the echoes of an ancient truth
that what I treat as worthless dust,
is the very canvas of life they have spent lifetimes searching for.
It is a striking thing, this awakening.
To see your home through the mirror of a stranger's joy.
To realize that the magic never left Kasane,
it was only my eyes that had gone to sleep.