Winter reveries

Pale lemon sickle moon hangs in the waning winter sky

Hadedas fly overhead, gliding on watercolour wings, inky black

The air brittle and chill bends under their desperate cry

Nocturnal creatures cower as the blood red sun sacrifices the night

Red stains the clouds briefly and dies.

The soft dusting of ice on the grass turns to tears of dew

Winter wraps herself in garments of pearly mist and vanishes

With the sun comes the memory of summer.

Time was when all memory was summer, delightful, new

With age winter takes hold and the ancient dust on which we tread

Echoes with the whispers of those passed on ahead

Watercolours weep across the page of life

This small part of Africa dissolving in the rain

The first small snowdrops come creeping through the soil

Colonial past tenacious in its delicacy, echoes of eras gone

Regrets paper the wall of memory; I try not to count them

Reach out and let them go – fly onto the winter wind

Calling the ghosts around corners, through the cracks

Seagulls shriek and cry, ever unhappy

The black shark banner flies in the breeze

In the icy waves menace stalks looking for succor

Patiently the surfers await another, better, day.

The sea swallows the sun, taking the last of the golden glow

Birds hasten ahead of nightfall – safely home

On the mountainside lights come on strands of a necklace

The lighthouse sends its signal like a metronome

Danger stalks the night sea, claiming at the heedless

The moon sends silver light like ice cracking across

The hiss and ebb of the sea – the winter’s night falls.

Elegy for the Dane (Huge)

Elegy for the Dane

The evening draws in, driving home the tendrils of

darkness

Clutch at the car

The leaves fall weeping from the trees and winter whispers

With icy breath

I smile to think of summer and you dance in memory

One more time

Once again we climb the mountains and hot and thirsty

You lie in streams

You and I laugh together as you rush greet me home from work

Pink teddy in your mouth

Walking the shore of the vlei in the evening Topaz catches sticks

You swim behind

I get drenched as you shake yourself dry and then plunge in again

Water people, you and I

The summer sun shines hot on your burnished copper coat as you run and

Pursued birds fly

Long days of companionship and laughter, you talk to me endlessly

A dog’s vocabulary understood

Now you’re gone – and far too suddenly your life is at an end

I miss you, my friend

But as the season changes, it’s time for us both to move along

I’ve addressed the wrong

Now I hear you on the winter wind, you need to leave

Your new journey calls

I lift my hand to my mouth; blow you a kiss to set your soul free

Next time we meet – remember me.

Letter to No One

The end of the day and the minute’s crash together, the hours fall like dominoes

Midnight rushes in to the vacuum, swallowing the waking hours

Just then, in that brief pause between chaos and silence

I add up the days

Sometimes the days stretched like elastic, appearing invincible

Laughter and friends walked hand in hand across time

Those are remembered like roses, full blown and eager

Precious as rubies, those days

Lately the days have weaved in and out, warp and weft of my life

Carrying news on the hours, cloaked in apprehension and fear

Everything in my world seems destined for change

A tapestry in darkest of hues

Cresting the minutes, biding the hour, here I find you, no one at last

My hand stretched in welcome, I bid you come in

Sit here beside me, lost in memory’s dark grasp

Together we’ll ride out the storm

He joined her last night

He joined her last night, slipping into her waiting arms

He joined her last night, slipped away into the shadow lands at last

The long slow minutes, the seconds tapping out his guilt

Hour upon hour clutching at release – all the tragedy now is past

“Boy” they called him – a nickname given 90 years ago

Handsome, charming he was wrapped in a golden glow

She called him “Pappa” with love and kindness in her soft tone

No children between them, her only son dead, left them all alone

A lovely lady, my special friend, closer than my mother

A heart-bond shared, she moved with grace and energy

Alive and sparkling, mischief in her eyes, she meant the world to me

Love born of hard times spoken of with laughter and fondness

Courage and patience they outlived adversity

Together like yin and yang – inseparable for harmony.

Then her voice stilled – lost for Eternity

And the clock counted the seconds accusingly.

What greater grief than to be the executioner

Leaving the seconds, days, months, years, raw and lonely?

Below is a poem I wrote for him 18 months ago

When he accidentally drove over and killed her after 50 years of marriage

I give thanks that he has joined her in the shadow

She is at rest now in the safe haven of his love again

Retrospective - lessons learnt too late

I have found how hard it is to lose one’s life,

The small things which I took for granted,

the infinite daily subliminal expectations,

how things used to be only noted by their absence.

Every minute, every hour I become more aware

How unappreciative habit had become

The repetition blunting the edge of gratitude

Making commonplace the extraordinary.

And unexpectedly the chasm looms,

Gone is the author of my life’s even tenor

The ache becomes deeper than the sea,

wider than the horizon, higher than the sky.

And now all these things that teemed with humanity

Have no substance, are lost, alone, empty

How could I know that when she left

She would take the whole of me?

All these years together, how I drifted into complacency

Knowing that our lives were drawing to a close

I made no allowances, carried on unfeelingly.

Then suddenly she was gone, fled this life

I did not think that I should be the author

and that her life would end so violently

Like holding a robin’s egg sky-blue in my

Hand, clenching my fist – shattered inadvertently.

The remaining years are far too long suddenly

Life’s hopelessness stretching to infinity

Nothing is important, what can living mean to me?

Without her life is lost, never to return.

All of nature’s beauty is calling her name

Places where we once laughed and loved now

Weep in the wind and cry on the rain

The sun has set, she will not come again.