Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

The Mirror

I had to do a pastel painting of surreal scene. I started painting and got this kind of horror image. The poem was prompted by the image.

I will take some of those red flowers, and some blue
I come here every year at Halloween the day she died
I make the same wish every year and it will come true
She didn’t come the last year tho I am sure she tried

But on Halloween the veil between the dead and us
Is so very thin especially as the moon is rising full
She will come this year, I know she will with no fuss
These flowers are the bait, that extra strong pull

She had long and curly hair, now has she cut it there
I brought a ribbon for her. She did so like contrast
Especially when she dyed purple. She had purple hair
The teachers were so cross but the colour didn’t last

Aunt Agnes says I shouldn’t come. That she will be
Changed. Total unrecognisable she will be Aunty said
I told her nonsense, more beautiful she will be
And anyway why should she change? She is very dead

I’ll go and stand and watch the remembrance mirror
It magic lets you see your long lost, beloved dead
She will love the the reds and blues of this flower
Bunch. Thank you so much. I just wish she wasn’t dead.

Well, when it came to closing time and the girl she
Hadn’t come back, so I roused the gardener, old Fred
And we went to that bad mirror on the bridge to see
And there we found her aged grey and horribly dead

Categories
Poetry

Wind in the Grass – Poem

Years ago, at my Mothers funeral, I saw my father reach for my Mothers hand to tell her something and saw the terrible distress, the recognition that she was gone. This poem is dedicated to him and that moment of loss.

Wind swirled grass flows in patterns
Like the thoughtless patterns traced
By the hands of an impassioned lover
Understood only by the restless wind

Mesmerized, distracted, not thinking
I stand staring, wondering, enjoying
I turn, reach out for your soft hand
Find emptiness, nothingness, a ghost

I turn to find that missing softness
The empty space, the achingly hollow
Place where you should be and aren’t
Ice cold reality returns and I sigh

Wind swirls the grass randomly still
Heads of seed, nod knowingly patient
Harvest comes to us all, the whisper
Of the scythe the only small warning

Categories
Cape Town Poetry Travel

Poem: Theewaterskloof

The Western Cape was hit by a crippling drought. The level of the main storage dam, Theewaterskloof dropped to 25% and vast tracts of it were just dust and loose sand instead of water. I had this poem rattling around in my head and it just demanded to be written.

Dust bowl dam. Sun light glitters, stark on pale
Bone white surfaces, black stark tree skeletons,
Dry shod, heat struck, sand blasted we cross
The sparkling dam that once was and is no more
Oven heat scrapes roughly across our exposed skin
Slitted eyes blink against the wind hurled dust
No breath to spare for the pointless vital question
What have we done? What have we left our children.

Theewaterskloof

Categories
Poetry

Poetry

I have been writing poetry for ages and you can see some of my poetry on my poetry page, but I also publish on Deep Underground Poetry site.

This one is not published anywhere so here goes

Crow

The air gently rises, I’m called, I’m called
“Spread now your wings, fly free, into the sky”
My wings impatient to ride the wind soaring
Softly call me to take the rising thermals
I spring away and fall before my wings
Gracefully open wide and strong
And bear my weight and break my fall
ends soft and soon begins my turn
Spiral, around, around, rising on water
Driven air, rising from plunging water
Gravity fueled, spring driven, seaward bound
It powers me up on wide spread wings.
I climb up, toward toward vast blue sky
Curving around the rising column
I’m grace, perfection, control, ease and
And above all master of the air
The ground recedes, the dry earth
Expands, stretches, and soon I high
Way above I fly, because I can
Not because I must and I am
Lord of all I survey.