First meeting

'twas good to get pics I've never seen from Norman's publisher, Jim Phelps of Echoing Green Press - taking me back to the day I first met Norman in the flesh: 18th October 2009, when he read from Triptych in Fish Hoek and to my joy gobbled the cheese sticks I had brought along.

Norman reads from Triptych 18/10/2009, Fish Hoek

Memory

Today

exactly a year ago

was our first meeting.

Over my hips I'd pulled my smoke-blue skirt;

over my breasts an old, pale pink knit-top

covered by cardigan;

my feet in Tsonga slip-ons -

altogether toned down,

I carried that basket of cheese sticks

you devoured.

I was afraid of my own insignificance,

so I avoided you immediately.

Finally, though, after kissing all the people I knew,

I had to turn

to the presence

of you

behind me.

You took my hand

in both of yours,

as if it were an honour -

oh, you were beautiful!

I looked neither up nor down, but

straight into your face

of lines touched everywhere by light,

and your loose hair a-tumble.

Surprised that you were

short and humble.

Then you gave your reading;

silent Jenny pointed lens;

Jim's wine turned to praise inside his mouth

as he besang your poems;

Izzie - in cow-patterend pants -

went on about life, and the past, and ja,

no, if you get off your motorbike

to actually write down the lines that come into your head -

I admire that, you know:

you must be the genuine thing.

Hugh quested -

'WhyTriptych?'

- while Peter, Paul, Lewis and me

sat round listening.

In front of everyone you bent

down to reach

your toes

- unselfconscious as an old elephant,

I thought (and later wrote) -

We mingled; spoke; I stared

at your shirt with words on it

- yours - Alchemy -

stared rudely through

to sense the leanness

of your middle region;

you said that Horus

- your email name -

is first flash of dawn -

and I wanted to say

so much that I didn't.

Paul and you exchanged books

- Dog Latin for Comeback -

you asked me, too, to sign,

so I scribbled 'Hello!'

beside the Bodhi Books logo

(designed out of the shadows

caught inside a photo) -

a small figure with inky arm and phallus greeting.

I offered you the last

cheese stick you took

saying, 'You're an angel.'

And I thought.,

'Well - at least I can make sticks

to feed a hungry man.'

- Yes. That is how

our story began.

(18th October 2010)

Norman, Paul Mason & me

Norman's Gold

Norman's Gold

Words

are

cups –

you can't make

truth

with them,

only that

which might hold

gold -

just as

you can't make

wine

out of clay,

but only

goblets

to

drink

from.

Cape Rain on the Road

The red and brown summer fields
- dead from the drought they endured -
are dark

with wet -
as if they were blushing with
expectation.

Road vignette

The black trees
scorched last year
have paled into purple -

royaled into colour
burnt orange trunks
are livened

by coiling
ivy
green.

Untroubled - A widow's favourite recipe

The Only Altar - two launch readings coming up

Two significant events next week in the littleness of my days - a launch of The Only Altar in my old haunt, Murdoch Valley, in the very road I once lived for over 19 years; and in Fish Hoek, at Norman's publisher Jim Phelps' house, where Norman and I met for the first time. I could not look at Norman initially for the magnetic pull I felt coming from him, on account of which I imagined he would be huge in size. How surprised I was when he was at eye level to me!

The Fish Hoek launch is private, but there is still space for bums in Murdoch Valley. 

Wish

The shell is not washed smooth -
toothed ridges
still stand -

umber tips
dot an ochre body
I wish

I could put
into
your hand.

Gratitude

I've just written, and published, the words for the Gratitude page on my website ... that virtual house of mine still under construction - arguably the space given to gratitude constitutes the most important room in any building!

Click here to enter this room!

Give your writing the Edge Newsletter No 33 March 2018

By yet another miracle, so it feels, the 33rd edition of Give Your Writing The Edge is in existence. Click here to read it online

This month’s editorial, named after a poem by Emily Dickinson, After Great Pain, reflects on the theme of death and rebirth at a moment in time when important human rituals as well as the seasons ask for it – in the North, as spring hatches; and here from where I write in the South, where autumnal fruitings are planting seeds to incubate the coming winter’s dreamings.

I am sad and proud to introduce two new names to the newsletter – firstly, that of Kris Marais, whose poem, State Property, commemorates an SADF conscript’s trauma during the Apartheid era; and Michael Whiteside, who offers a response from a fellow conscript’s perspective. These traumas lie 30-40 years back in time; the fact that poetry and the powers of the word generally can be galvanised to help re-live to mourn such injuries is one deciding reason why I serve the Muse.

Eva van Belle’s poem paying tribute to a man recently murdered in the mountains that grace her home shows poetry carrying more than just the news.

Her prose description of her solitary hacking battles, included here, was not in fact sent as a submission, but as a point of interest for a one-time hacker on the Table Mountain Chain, namely, myself. I include this enjoyably readable piece for its encouragement to all who are given opportunity to embrace the fact that looking after the earth may be an endless process, but is never futile! (Acknowledgment for this helpful distinction is due to my one-time neighbour, the late John Hale, who with botanist Hugh Taylor founded the voluntary group SAVE – the Swartkop Alien Vegetation Eradicators – on the Cape south peninsula 40 years ago.)

And … there’s an Easter poem written by me in response to a long-eared visitor to my window!

May you enjoy this rich edition. Thanks go to Mari de Beer for giving up her time to proofread.

Thanks as always goes, too, to Leigh Barrett, for hosting the online version of this newsletter.

If you want to subscribe to the newsletter by making a monthly donation of R10, please do so here:

Food of intelligence

Working with
internet technology is
like I imagine our ancestors

must have found tracking
their quarry ... and here, our spoor of
dots and

slowly
turning
spools we

watch
while
waiting

on
the
hunt for

the food
of
intelligence.

Selected poems (July-August 2017)

(This post was first published on the Ecca Poets blog site)

Best drier

The best drier
of tears
is the wind.


Date: 23.7.2017

__________________________________

Still calls

I put your underpants
back in the drawer,
your t-shirt into the cupboard.


A time will come
to lose
those rituals


but for now
the Wood owl
still calls.


Date: 25.7.2017

__________________________________


In each other

At our usual
picnic spot
on the R63


I stop
to note my gladness
at these places


across
the country
we shared.


We were
without wanting
to be


a restless pair
forced to travel
these roads


– never really
at home
except


in
each
other.


Date: 16.8.2017

_______________________________________
Silke Heiss
_______________________________________