Tuesday in Tschumkwe

There's so little we can verify.
If days were people, all of my days

Amount to a medium-sized town,
A suburb, an urban arena,

And it seems about right. Every day
Has its own fraught personality

And is as crammed with signs and symbols
Intruding from other days and lives,

As infinitely divisible
With richly textured ecosystems

As can be found in any person.
Once, women nursed, chatted and shaped beads

From leather strings of chipped ostrich shells
Around a smoky, small, fragrant fire

That kept the biting insects at bay,
And I watched quietly, a Tuesday.