Of Blood and Gourds

I sit, knees to chin 
contemplating my customs reentry card 
wondering whether to check the boxes that might betray 
my time among livestock and jungle shrubs.

These boxes ward against small organic stowaways 
that, if released, would recolonize the landscape.
(The irony endures.)
There is no box to check to ward against the ethereal stowaways I am harboring
stowaways of inception
that have already begun to colonize the flora of my spirit.

Maybe it’s best not to admit
this calabash gourd I’m carrying
the deepest resonator of a village gyil
was just doused with chicken blood last week
for a purification attended by baby goats and other wandering mammals, 
a purification meant to carry it all the way across the friendly skies 
and hallowed oceans 
(of a darker passage), 
a purification meant to prepare it 
for the accidental assaults 
of one who might try to use it to learn anew
how to listen. 

While the brains and the hands brokered a reluctant and troubled partnership,
the gyil burrowed hard into my humid skin.
A liminal tuning
An enjambment 
that claimed space in some of my deeper interstices. 

Akwaaba, obroni, back to the desert. 

As each buzzing whispering murmuring jangling calabash 
fills with cactus dust,
tiny ghosts of good intentions settle into the cracks. 
The hot fog of the Gold Coast 
abandons the gourds,
ascending elsewhere upon final descent.

***