A River That Was A Desert Poem by Philani Zincume

The greatest sight I had ever seen
I embarked on a mission to explore.
It was a river, a river from a distance.
I looked into this river but found a desert.

A desert with dry grounds and no trees
Only rocks and stones with no sound of water.
Darkness and confusion emerged and converged,
Dehydrating my soul and suffocating my spirit
Pulverising my mind and annihilating my heart.

All this, exacerbated by hopes raised,
Hopes raised by the river to quench my thirst.
I regarded the existence of a thought,
A thought which appeared in a soul,
The whole world for each is peculiar and private to that thought.

Going round and around in circles
Circles closed on the outside.
Resurrecting passages of history
And corridors of the past.

Two worlds converged, intersected and diverged.
What was well understood became a conundrum
A mysterious tale and inexplicable riddle
A river that flows with tears directly from a heart that sobs around me
I looked into a river but found a desert.