Nkondi.

Dazzling, the blackness of nails
deals appearing first
in the velvet-spray, like needles

of ghostly metronomes: bodied larghettos
in their own time emerging
a nocturne of hidden snows

that landscape the bond…
and if you sit long enough in a booth upstairs
late into the morning, growing

broader under the darkness
of a dream, staring, feeling,
your mind may begin

to glide and you find you
are standing, beginning the walk
home; Virgilian enlightenment.

With apologies to Scott Challener.
Angolan nkondi figure as seen at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.