Boy in Africa.

Look, look at the boy. Look at the him sleeping by the lonely Acacia tree. Look at his tanned skin. Look at his pale palms with dark lines across them. Look at the Arsenal top he wears and watch him wake from under the hat. The straw makes his brow itch but he likes the hat. He likes the pool before him and he likes the antelopes that drink from it. He likes their little horns and he likes that when they drink they look as if they are kissing another antelope in another land. He likes the sun and the Acacia tree and the red sand and he likes the adobe hut he lives in. The hut is all on stilts and sat on the water and his Muder, that is how she said it ‘Muder’ ‘Muder and Fuder’, his Muder and Fuder were shouting at the Antelopes and they were laughing at them doing little impressions of them bolting and running. They had lines from the laughter all across their faces and they were old and his father is a fisherman but his father had no luck and even less fish and they all lived together. Lived in the hut which had a roof that is only a corrugated bit of iron and they would huddle under it when the rain made craters in the sand and his father would tell silly stories and his mother would tell him to shut up and they would all laugh together.