bone digger

the present is empty
swallowed by the shadows of the backlands
dry as a dust bone scattered veld
Star speckled dreamscapes remain.

Restitution

After that time,
That forbidden in conversations
Carpet pulled over the cracks time
The time even my war torn dreams refuse to revisit,
I stayed, and made life small, simple, and beautiful.

I kept fresh flowers next to my bed
I watered the lawn and sat by the rippling fishpond
And like the concentric circles of the calmly ambling fish
I felt pulled back into a rythmn I could understand,
And I survived.

Atlantic

This side of the ocean

Will now be

What I see

In my dream sea

The chill fever sleepless nights

Seeing an ocean of barnacle infested, swollen tonsils

Drowning in this health consuming water

The nights are endless

This place has infected my subconscious

Shrinking clarity and reality

Stripping the mind of sunshine vitamins.

Twenty Years of Sadness

Between the limits of daily routine
The parking spaces of consciousness, dotted lines
Signifying allotted boundaries between then and now
Mental indigestion fails to metabolize the memories
Imagination stoops, bends,
Attempts to recover the broken mind.

Heartbeat

A beating drum

A beating heart

Darkness outside

The pulse beats far, far away from my body

This pulse finds levity with the red earth

This pulse moves with the breath of cattle

With the heat steamed breath from cow to calf

in the kraal,

cloud breath bubble against the Highveld winter

beating as steady as a well practiced drummer

finding rhyme,  finding meaning.

Reflection

Depending on the clarity of the water
the faces can be either ours or theirs
the murky parts leave the question lingering

Seasonal

I long for Roodekranz
Where the icy morning
Breathes the season with the moisture on the ground
The bare branches
The scent of disappearing plant in cold  quiet