Creativity Book: Spin—9

Finding the voices ...

There’s a special section for you at The Write to Poetry called “The Creativity Coach” (paid subscribers).

First up at The Creativity Coach is a serial offering of our creativity book by Claire Haidar (Burge) … Spin: Taking Your Creativity to the Nth Degree.

The bottom of the garden is like a haunted forest where a bedraggled witch resides. I imagine her hiding in one of the hibiscus trees. In this high-walled, thick-bushed area, all I hear from the other side is a lot of shouting and barking. Sometimes I am brave and weasel myself behind the sturdy branches. No one can see me here, especially if I have on the right-coloured clothes.

There is one place in the wall that the builders did not fill with enough cement, leaving a bubbled hole big enough for me to peep through and not get caught. I have a full view of the yard. It is surrounded by big trees: high ones that hang low, stooping towards the grass as if they are weighted down with burden. The grass is perfectly clipped, always. I can only see the back of the house: it is just a big whitewashed wall without shape or form. It simply rises high and ends, bluntly.

The voices are always there. One is their maid. I know that. I never see her, but her muttering in her native Sotho has become distinct.

I have deciphered her incantations: high-pitched when angry, low in short bursts when annoyed. She’s never happy; I never hear light-hearted singing or whistling. Another is the garden boy. I wonder why I never find him clipping the perfect lawn. Instead, all I hear are his large garden scissors clipping at an area I cannot see. Together, they mutter. Something is amiss over in this yard.