Stories

Splendid Land

South Africa, the land of my birth

How I long for your beauty

To walk those everyday paths

Warm and familiar, bustling with home

Here I yearn to say to someone

"look, that's where I used to play!’

How I long to drive along the coast

Flashing moments hurry to my heart

The vexing sand between my toes!

Antagonizing humidity.

How I long for the mountains

The majestic Drakensberg

Glory at scale, imposing splendour

I go about my second life in this new

welcoming, yet foreign land

My assiduous soul has respite in dissonance

I pray my children will love it here

And know how hard it was to say good-bye

Continuous good-byes twist and jerk

and sever strings that are trying to affix

I fumble for something that might

repair the gash and hold together 

that crack between yesterday and tomorrow

Oh how I miss you, motherland!