South Africa (Mzansi), my Next Destination

Poem — Mzansi: Come Walk With Us Come walk with us where the ocean remembers the sun,   where Table Mountain keeps its slow, patient watch over the city,   where the wind writes letters in the grass of the Highveld   and the veld answers back in a thousand small green voices.   Come with a suitcase of curiosity and a pocket full of questions;   leave with a map of new stories stitched into your palms. Here the coastline is a long, generous hand—   Cape Town’s bays like open notebooks,   Durban’s warm sea a slow, laughing drum,   the Garden Route a ribbon of emerald and salt.   Drive and stop and listen: the gulls have accents,   the waves recite old names, and every harbour has a welcome. In the north the land opens like a book of light—   the Karoo’s blue distance, the Drakensberg’s cathedral of stone,   where dawn pours gold into t...