almost summer now and days stretch, longer evenings gold and thick with life open like a window in time –
sunstained by berries rasp and young, goose and straw i find myself, last light, in the garden with wattle and string in hand, scissors precarious in pocket,
(and it is hard not to be in love here with this soil this place this earth with these gods of here whose names i have never known – gods who stir and sigh at the edge of our living and dying here it is hard not to be in love here)
building trellis and temple for the tomatoes that grow elbow to finger tip by the day – for the purple beans that are reaching beyond their cross-weave poles into the guava and onto the shaggy sod-roof of the hen house,
purple black sap pods hang in handfuls ready for the picking, firm sticks for jalapeno and brinjal while the sky seeps into the hill
and as the toad stirs from its leaf home shallow dug under the chamomile for its night toading
i say my thanks close the gate go inside to cook the beans chop the greens eat
this always was this might always be this is
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: TENDING A DIFFICULT GARDEN
what songs are these that scald our lips and leave our tongues hot sand and grit numb in our mouths.
what songs are these hissed in bellow anger that drives us beating beating palm to stretch skin under a silence of cleared sky where no sky had been seen before.
songs of stump and limb and sever and ache.
and when the tears come as come they will when the anger that burned is cooled by the rain.
when the tears come and we sing the lament of every tree that fell – until there is no more in us left to sing
who then will plant the trees – who then will have breath enough to sing the saplings to the sky.
3.
what shifts in the mind of man between seeing breathing recognising beauty and want lust greed – i must have it own it consume it.
did they arrive here southern south coast of africa away away – so far away did they arrive here green jewel mist morning glittering lakes and trees and trees and trees, stand a moment among a choir of voices unheard and say how great is our god of the sky that he has made a world this beautiful –
or were they afraid afraid of this thrumming wildness this green and loud with birdsong world – (tame it chain it own it) did he open his eyes on this strange shore and say mine mine all of it mine.
did we see no more than a storehouse for plundering – selling the wealth of the world limb by limb on boats across the ocean. selling our earth and our future.
4.
“earth my body, water my blood”
5.
this forested here lived human inhabited for ten thousand years before, was farmed seasonal nomadic pastoralist for good three thousand of that and still the trees stood, the elephant roamed, the antelope grazed the forest edge in morning light
between the 1760 arrival of first settlers from europe to these deep forest slopes and the forest protection act of 1940 the forest was decimated destroyed logged to depletion the elephant sport hunted to functional extinction. a world harvested like a cornfield as if it took a season to grow.
and even that protection was not enough more timber more land more people and towns and agriculture more infrastructure more habitat loss.
and who are we to sing this lament, who am i daughter of the moon daughter of the forest daughter of a daughter of a colonial bastard somewhere who am i to sing this lament.
and i can say not in my name – not in my name do you rape and burn and fell – not in my name – but here i am driving highway town to town – fetching my daughter daughter of the river forest daughter of the moon. fetching my daughter from school built buildings mainroad mall mcdonalds school where the forest stood where the elephants sang where others lived on quiet feet before.
6.
there are remnants bits of deep forest, an elephant or two, old trees that got away one close by – an old giant a living monument to what was (and perhaps one day might be) with boardwalks and information plaques age height girth she towers above the canopy and i know she is she for the berries she scatters in hope, we go there sometimes cross the ferned stream lean over the railing to place our hands on that immense lichen moss trunk. feel the seasons and years and centuries move through her slowly know we are in the presence of all that is holy.
7.
what songs are these that scald our lips and leave our tongues hot sand and grit numb in our mouths.
what songs are these hissed in bellow anger that drives us beating beating palm to stretch skin under a silence of cleared sky where no sky had been seen before.
songs of stump and limb and sever and ache.
and when the tears come as come they will when the anger that burned is cooled by the rain.
when the tears come and we sing the lament of every tree that was felled – until there is no more in us left to sing
who then will plant the trees – who then will have breath enough to sing the saplings to the sky.
8.
i sing a song of mothers the song of mornings the song of scars that heal and seed banks held quiet in waiting soil. of mphephu and bitou that cover bare earth like a gauze like a bandage like a shroud for the dead to soothe protect cool the soil grow the seeds – the song of keurboom and halleria budlleja and rhus – pioneer trees that sprout and sapling and weave a low canopy where the old trees the slow trees the timber giants can grow slow in the light in a forest of becoming and becoming
9.
“earth my body, water my blood”
For Sherry at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: THE TONGUES OF FALLING TREES
this morning, most mornings first light, while the kettle warms i take the short dew-walk barefeet through the garden up the drive to the goathouse to open the door for the day, release the two hens with their twenty two chicks between them let the goats out among the trees scoop scraps around the bales for the rabbits
after tea there will be feeding and watering and attending but for now – first light this is enough.
some mornings are more wild than others – when i returned to the goathouse an adder was resting in the soft threshold sun maybe the length of my arm potent patterned beautiful perhaps she had slept the night among the bales.
puff adders are territorial they choose a place and live there – a goathouse is not a good home for a puff adder – too many goats too many dogs too many early mornings late nights barefeet in the twilight – too many patterns and spaces among the bales.
we do not kill here, we live alongside – night adder and boomslang and herald and more, but puff adders are slow to move quick to strike and sometimes lethal. she had to find another home.
gumbooted and elder-staffed i watched her, peaceful she slept a slow river in the sun-warm dust. watched she did not slip away among the bales while my daughter phoned the snake catcher they have release permits for puff adders in wild places.
slowly she became aware of my presence – tasted the air with her dark adder tongue pulled her tail a little closer – settled in the sun once more.
the snake catchers, all four of them, were unavailable.
some mornings are a little more wild than others and some things need to be done whether we want to do them or not
i watched, cautious as a cat watched her scale ripple and silent as she folded along a log, rested her adder head on her broad scaled back and watched – time passed while we watched each other and i wished my tongue could speak her – explain my actions on this quiet morning in spring – but the space between stretched silent as skins pinned up to dry.
i meant her no harm, but when my intention shifted from watching to capture she saw me for the danger i was and darted towards the goathouse, to shelter.
i intercepted tried to lift her with the three pronged elder staff – but she turned muscle coil and movement – swimming light through the prongs.
and so our dance began – her leading me following slowly slowly moving her from the goats who watched slow chewing behind the fence – she darting and hiding – invisible among tree root and leaf litter – quiet among the undergrowth – watching and being watched until eventually flicked into the open road where i could half lift half herd her into the plastic box laid leaf littered and waiting – tip it upright click on the lid – done adrenaline surge laughter – done.
i would rather not capture her patterned coiled beauty – rather not move her away away potent patterned coiled but she lives too close to wild to unspeak our mutual danger.
she is the wild silence the dream-time dancer, the old medicine shedding life and death, the watching and the watched potent patterned coiled.
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE.
a first song a clapping game on a father’s knee – lindi-ann is no good chop her up for fire wood when she’s dead we’ll bake her head into ginger bread.- words shape us when our tongues are still learning to shape the world.
there were days in between perhaps years, when nasturtium leaves were tall shade on damp spring mornings their parasols shining wordless veining cathedral glass against the blueness of sky while our hands learned gesture please want good bye – learned here is the church here is the steeple open thumb doors where are the people.
one potato two potato three potato four
when we moved from that place from our suburban house across the road from the school where my brother went before me where i used to listen for the bell violet fingered high in the branches of the mulberry tree singing nameless ballads of me and now and leaf between mouthfuls of mulberry and muttered incantations to branches out of reach
when we moved from that yellow bagged purple jacarandered house in the suburbs i tied a burst blue balloon around the smooth barked branch of my friend the guava tree, to remind me of the place so that one day i might return and see that blue balloon and remember it was all true the world that i had sung was real.
illogical i know
and there were years, days, lives between when words and poets swallowed me jonah whole only to be spat out again to see the world anew and i waited by that shore, drew the sound the sea made with my toes in the sand, tried to build song birds out of found bones and broken wings, drank salt mist from cupped hands and waited hoping to meet that whale once more and once more and once more,
sometimes waiting is not living. sometimes knee deep in the world the words come to find us. illogical i know
but suppose, like now when warmth of spring has gathered grey cloud after a mornings weeding and tying taller by the hour tomatoes, and the rain falls sudden and hard and the heat and the smell of it rises damp thirst quenched from the soil, and these words, all the words become a blue balloon tied to a smooth bark branch marking a place where the world sang true.
For Joy Ann Jones at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: FIRST POEMS, DOOR TO THE WILDER EYE.
1. some days our prayer is a pot of butternut soup thrown at the wall saying no more no more no more
2. there is no sky this morning drizzle mist has claimed the coast, pooled in deep valleys and stretched thin across the hills, ghosting trees and goose flight.
loud with with birds in the cocooned mist we unfold our elbows, cup warm tea, loosen our skin to the morning.
3. i thought i loved her/e before i came – before i moved daughters and mare, table and benches to be her/e, i thought i came here because i (abstract)loved wanted needed her/e – but it turns out i came because i needed to love her/e (act action actively) – that the loving i needed to do was her/e – that here is where i do my loving.
4. in spring, weeding among the greens – garden billowing with sap growth and humming with life – hands burrowing among the stems sorting chickweed and dandelion – weeds that feed from knotweed and hairy-stemmed unnamed tenacity that will strangle tomatoes by summer
and i know i know among all this awakening that adders too have woken from winters long sleep in hollows and caverns and quiet, and in among the rummaging and pulling and soil shaking
i mutter my prayers and my thanks to the serpent gods for being mindful of me as i am of them, to take care of my children as i take care of theirs, in spring, weeding among the greens.
5. and what if the body ails. what if blood like rivers slows – laden microplastic, algal bloom, bottles and bags and silt sludge sediment.
what if the body ails , what if skin that has ached for its own undoing on moss bark mist mornings is now un-doing – swaddling in comfort and the memory of what was.
6. friday night, late before sleep – rain thrumming the roof and windows and leaves. friday night late before sleep a sunbird – day bird, jewel of the morning bird flutters moth against the window. thumb-small with wings and vulnerable to the night, i ask her what she is doing out past 11 in the rain – why she waited so late to seek shelter – she does not answer i take her rebuke.
who am i to question someone seeking refuge in a living of the world beyond my understanding.
out in the rain i stilled those panicked wings against the glass. folded she sat quiet in one closed hand while i made a nest of a mohair hat – locked her safe in the wardrobe for the night.
morning here breaks first with birdsong, then with light – in the space between i unfold my hands, gesture an open book, a please and a thank you, and she darts grey winged a forest prayer to the wakening sky.
7. and what of the prayers we do not speak – do not voice or shape with tongue and thought. what of the hands and knees soil prayers, what of forehead to the forest floor prayers, what of the catch breath, broken sky prayers and touch of skin that lingers lingers prayers. what of blood prayers and mud prayers and the silence of stars prayers. what of the earth prayers that speak us in our walking of the world.
8. and some days our prayer is help me, i cannot walk this world alone any more – cannot walk it into being on my own, some days our prayer is help me.
For the Earthweal weekly challenge: ENACTIVISM AND THE POETRY OF BECOMING
inhabitant of a foggy coast of shifting tide beginnings and ends undefined – were you here that day long-legged red beaked on the beach – were you here that day the boats came floating upturned whales riding the waves we came were you here. were you here that day the world changed tree by tree the world fell and changed and you ran with the tide briefly airborne while a wave crash flooded the oyster beds and then landed living again were you here. were you here that day the forest people left no trace of their living but some shell memories in a cave and a hole in a fast imploding world. did you watch as the wind stole their footprints – erased their path were you here, wet gusts tugging at black feathers when they left. were you here the day the elephants came grey fogged skin wrinkling out the forest with the tide they paused a moment breathed whale-song on the beach and then sighed into sea – gone. did you shrill call their names cry windblown for their loss do you fly the mist breakers still searching for their return – were you here. were you here the day they were born – turtle carried they came wave lullabied and brought to this shore. were you here the day they came, do you share this beach that breathes at the edge of tomorrow will you be here the day they dance this world’s beginning dancing full bright on this edge of unknown. the time is close oystercatcher will you be here still running with the tide.
2013
For Sherry at Earthweals weekly challenge: WILD SOULS.
Since writing this in 2013 I am pleased to read that the population of the African Oystercatcher has stabilised and it it is no longer on the threatened species list.
i offer no illusion last night the hen house was raided. opened the door to a mess of feathers and blood this morning, all of them gone.
nothing of the spotted hen but her liver licked clean on some star splashed quills. the rooster dead and whole in the middle of it all, too big to be carried into the night.
and what is to be done now when there is no undoing and blossoms still open petal by petal to the sun.
i offer no hope, i never could. i never could be your shield in the face of inevitability, your deep pool waiting for you to drown in your own reflection.
i want to see us thrive, but that is between me and and the rich dark earth – hands and knees in the garden.
i offer no explanation the moon rose. the raspberries were good, tart, early or perhaps really really late either way there is no space in the sky anymore for anything other than what always was and always is. plastic bags have learned to swim like jellyfish, riding ocean currents crammed thick and close with plankton and krill and bottles and stuff.
i offer no religion but the taste of rain and pulsing forest though you know we turn to prayer when the world is aflame and the ocean starts to gnaw at our cities, but who then will be listening – which sane god would choose to love us now.
and of course we ran when the flames came close. laid my hands on the soil of my home, whispered stay safe while spring flower heads towered and lolled in the unseasonable wind. crammed child and goat and dog in our car and fossil-fuelled our way to safety – an ugly irony in this warming world.
i offer no excuse: this is not a season we might remember, but a landscape. winter has washed through us, left our bones clean to the wind
and yet spring rises – sap green and bursting, birds are building nests in my hair. when autumn comes, the birds will fly and i will be here still, here.
i offer nothing but this effigy. gathered words and cloth bound with hair and the grass rings woven while the wild freesias bloom along the river
where sometimes fish as long as my arm leap, slap the surface silver and return to the depths i could never fathom – even in summer, diving below, ears taut and full with pressure arms reaching beyond my breath outstretched until there is nothing but sun-shafts, shadow-water and eternity looking at this moment bathed in light.
lying in my bed listening for the sunrise my feet stretch north warming my toes on the equator. right ear to the morning, left to the setting sun, my hair drifts southwards – tidal swirlings on an infinite sea.
arms spreading east and west form the coastal belt outeniqua tstitsikama langeberg kouga mountainous names that follow curves peak in breasts with armpit valleys and soft catchments where elbows have folded in on themselves for years.
these are long arms that cling white knuckled to the edge of africa, strong arms that embrace.
this is warm earth, fertile plains and the bones that sing my history. from hand to hand an arc of sky and the path of sun and moon flooding me with light.
written june 2015
revised september 2022
For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: A MAP OF HISTORY’S MYSTERIES.
fresh poetry 