Marimba Beetle

by

Frank Valentyn

He came back from Mozambique
with several things animate and inanimate
gifts, physical constructs
that had in their making been subject
to the psyche of the area

There were two light-rough-wood ketches
with off-white, well-shaped, wind-longing canvas sail
which he had bartered for food
as the best intersection between abundant local materials
hunger and natural talent
is foreign visitors
and their suspected intentions

There were kilos of crisp calamari
in still-frozen watery blocks
in interesting plastic bags with portuguese cryptographics
flown out with the chopper
after the three weeks of saving flood-victims
and dropping WFP foodpack rations
those went into the freezer and to neighbours

There was a very playable marimba
with elongated oval, hardwood bars
two sticks with mallet-ends carved from truck-wheel tyre
with fascinating little feral facets
each bar resonating in graded gourds
that had yellow-orange moss-like discolorations
and a fine, trip-dancing hoarse tone
gritty with a damped little fluty resonance
like a knock-tone followed home
by whistling against the edge of paper
the whole construction tightly strapped
with thin untanned strips of grey-white hide
and I call it a marimba here
as I only later learned that it was a traditional timbila

The most intriguing gift
was the surprise occurring only four months later
when, some calamari still there for neighbours,
small conical piles of fine micro-dust appeared
at select spots under the marimba’s bracing frame
and at the back too, under a soft-light-wood member
for a while I considered whether continuous playing
would anaesthetise or force them to evacuate
but it made more sense that it would habituate
and perhaps make the piles grow faster

They crawled out after the insecticide
applied with great reluctance
two, small dying things, specialised, no wings
defied classification with my limited entomological education
I just called them Marimba Beetles
careful observation proved no further pile-generation
and resonant hollowing of structure
that might well have made stronger
instead of weaker, perhaps, I’ll never know
how they were meant to play their role
but there’s definitely something missing
in that marimba, although it’s mostly there for show
under the masks from Kenya and Malawi
rarely played by glancing passers-by

For Alex

NEXT?
Why don't you look at Neo-haiku. 19.
by: Azra Daniel Francis
from: Windsor, ON, CA

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