When nature claims a brand

A while back, one of my fellow-poets invited us to generate poems for a new brand of naartjies, Clemengold. They were awarding prizes. A few of us rose to the occasion with grace and aplomb. I was not among them.

I see they make gin and all sorts with those fruits, which I have yet to taste.

Out of the blue, or the still grey, rather, this morning, the word clementgold suddenly became a need: a colour of sound. Merciful gold, orange gold, fresh gold in a lung bodying forth song. You'll understand this little yodle better if you read the poem below.

I thought that the 't' had been there all along, but then discovered that nature had added it back in - for 'sing' to have an edge, a 'sting', perhaps?

So here, at last, is my tribute not exactly to the commercial brand, but to a brand-new colour given me on Mother's Day by a bird's warm joyousness: clement gold.

Clement gold

The common Cape robin's

exceptional liltings

waken me, pull a smile

from me, easily, through

the lightening curtain folds.

Her* thoughtful trills,

flutings, flourishing frills,

spring clear, fresh from

her clement-gold breast.

- Silke Heiss, 9th May 2021

* Female robins, I read, sing as well as do the males. 

The secret of the writerly gift

The secret of the writerly gift is the ongoing inner alivenesses - your responsiveness to what comes at you from the external world, and your particular ability to calibrate this with your inner world. That dynamic constitutes the adventure of your heart and soul as they are embodied, briefly, in the span that makes up your life. In essence, your gift is the ability to ride the scythe of death - each living, passing moment is marked, memorialised in words strewn about it like flowers upon a fresh grave.

- Hogsback, 4th May 2019