Will guard

Silke Heiss

Old ram,

your big, brown body,

resting where you slept

– under that grand white stinkwood –

on this cold morning.

The delicate white line,

arcing along your spine,

your leathery, grey neck and head,

the two white stars on your jaw, by your smile,

I note, as if I were a painter.

I heard a famous writer say

there are too many South African nature poems,

so she writes about people.

I'll not argue with her preferences,

nor deny myself the nourishment

of your brownness and your greyness,

your purple tongue and ink-black eyes,

that teach me gentleness

and strength.

I'll guard your self-renewing peace –

testify:

not all members of the human race

are racing,

and grace

will take the form

of blood and muscle, hair and skin, and patience

– forever, and today.

(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets

An ending

Ed Burle

The man with the shaven head has given up

his hair

because he has lost, because he has lost her;

because she’s made it quite clear –

that something, for her, has changed irreversibly;

because no matter how often he can say those words to her –

say them as he did only yesterday, as he goes on saying them

even now – they cannot unsay those things that have been said;

because he can see, there is no place here to hide;

because nothing can stop

what is pushing them, has moved them apart;

because she – troubled, lovely – more lovely perhaps

than she’s ever been to him –

she is so far from him now;

because if there is a future for them – whatever it may be –

it isn’t here or now,

and each of them must try to find their way;

because perhaps even from pain, and from all

that now is lost,

someday, something may grow;

because even if it was – even if it still is – this fight

is no longer worth fighting for.

(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets

Photograph

Olwethu Mxoli

In this photograph my mother doesn’t know she will be my mother.

Her dress fans out like a sigh around her cinnamon legs

and her braids fly like a dream.

I can hear her laughter singing through the sepia

her eyes teasing above her shoulder

“Look at me,” they say.

“Look at me.”

(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets