Fragments – Reflections on Disconnection

Words and photographs by Deborah Ewing

 

Fragments is a collection of short poems and photos compiled during the Covid lockdown.

 

It’s a reflection on disconnection, or fragmentation – splitting or being broken into tiny pieces. Some pieces can be reattached, even regrown. Many shards are lost or scattered, leaving us unrecognisable to ourselves.

 

Disconnected, within and without, we may still glimpse the whole in fragments.

A frayed mooring rope flutters in a cornflower blue sky. It seems to follow the speck of a bird above a marigold sunset. In the foreground, the darkened stern of a trawler sits on the wrinkled grey ocean.

Fragmentation – splitting or being broken into tiny pieces.
Lives are fragmented by many forces.
Some pieces can be reconnected, even regrown.
Many shards are lost.
We find ourselves incomplete, unrecognisable.
The pandemic that started in 2020 has scattered us,
disconnected us from ourselves and each other.
I try to reconnect, to find the whole in the fragments.

Thorn
A close shot of the red-tipped thorns and grey-green leaves of a giant aloe, photographed in a Harare garden in March 2020, when COVID-19 hit Africa.

In the vastness of this
Speak for no one
But do not be silent
Describe your fragment
The thorn on the aloe
That you cannot touch
The view from the door
through which you may not walk
The wailing of your heart
On the wind.

Remnants

Recall the smallest detail
Overlooked in the lost world of before
The cheese and oil beneath the fingernails
The remnants of the bread
Torn seven times in half
Passed from hand to mouth
The question left unasked
Until the never of next time.

Paradox

Puce and pomegranate plumes
Fold over the Umtamvuna
Only clouds and birds
Dare cross this resurrected border
Paradox of a pandemic
Indiscriminate division.

Harbour Walk

Shadows cast light
On layers we might overlook
Holding us with patterns
Where we would not pause.

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