play

understated undulations
radiating from fingers
ululating soft shadows
over
the claviature

the blade of her soul

she knows her tongue is the sheath
for the blade of her soul
one day a blade of grass
the next a blade of knife

for once she writes away
her feeling of inadequacy
and for a fleeting moment
believes in her capability
to nourish deeply and to cut finely

 - Lara Kirsten

Answer to Larkin

Children carry parents’ tears,
the yokes of their mistakes –
they saunter wryly through the years
and make their jokes.

– Silke Heiss


Sunrise

A quiet seagull couple
– floating in a flood
of light –
dipping heads, nipping
struggling, feelery things,
nodding necks, to get them down.

Cold feet (not theirs)
on the sand, in the blood
of this moment.

– Silke Heiss

Etymology

I work at words, but also watch
the Cape robin perch aslant the dry stem
of the wild dagga plant this autumn:

yesterday in Addo the Karoo shrub robin
fanned a white tipped tail as she dipped
down into the under-branches of dry brush.

Me, I word-watch, wish I had a Roberts
of poetry for this flitting in my scrub-mind.

- Brian Walter