Four poems for Norman by Brian Walter

Presences

Your monkey troop clambers

in the winter magnolia – chuckling

and chirping and reaching for buds,

scampering and riding

high the bending branches

like boys in a Frost poem.

And in the lit morning,

from the next house, the strains

of Pianoman finger the air.

These are the sounds you hear

in a poet’s garden, he having left

this while, and roving out west. 

29th July 2017

  

Seer

On an autumn day in Africa

you came from your mountain

to tell of a face you saw

in your almond tree.  Nothing

you say could alarm me: I trust

your eyes and mind: ancestors

have been kind enough to call

on you.  Myths are making you

their own.  When you left, humbly

I plucked for my autumn vase

a living twig of wild olive,

the last sprig of almond

from my tree, and one bronze

chrysanthemum, the first

this season.  Autumn: you see past

foliage to the very word of tree. 

from Tracks

Gaga footbridge

                   Alice days, for Norman Morrissey

Time was the skies opened,

and we on a motorbike

going home via Chitibunga’s bottle store:

but the dip of the Gaga was flooded,

so we ducked off right, and over

the footbridge, undaunted and soaking.

After our transaction, kindly and warm ‒

do you know the big guy was later killed

by robbers, right at his till, and he so hardy

and big-boned ‒ you held our two packets

of beer, one in each hand, on the pillion,

balancing, arms dependent. Times like these,

I remember the first beer, standing now

in dry clothes ‒ watching the downpour hitting

at everything, water washing in gushes

where we never thought water would flow ‒

and laughing,

life balanced in your safe hands,

motorcycle passenger,

over the straight and narrow footbridge.

  

from Poems Packed for Travel

Ngqika’s Kop 

A smoke haze rises from far-off forests

this weekend, while we work about the house,

or watch patches of cricket on TV.  “Pine-forest fire,

in the hills,” we agree, and consider

how the forecast cold front, that now chills

the test in Cape Town, will soon quench this blaze.                         

But tonight flames still crackle in the dark,

crowning the mountains, right up where the stars

hold the sky.  And then ― this Monday morning ―

snow.  That African hill stands majestic,

wears white Ethiopian skirts, and appears so brave

and blessed that all looks well with the world. 

Watching from our lowlands, we did not know

that you’d spent the holidays fire-fighting,

beating raging flames from neighbour houses,

smoke-choked and seared; and how your team

of volunteers rushed to ever moving

crisis-points, calling details and command;                                           

               

how, late that Sunday night, so many of you,

hearing sounds of peaceful susurration,

left exhausted houses to stand outside,

calm in the dousing rain that at last fell,

then crept indoors to sleep; and how your dreams

coalesced collectively into snow.

from Mousebirds