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
