My mcgregor poetry experience is interwoven with my mother like the grapevines and vinke veld and rietjies of her tongue from her well.
In such ways that mcgregor got a familiar and poetic feel to it and I feel my mother in the landscape.
Poetry being kind of condensed images created with words...
And mother tongue the kind of water ways your mother exposed you to from her womb through her own soul’s eyes words.
As if it is her will welling up in me that brought me to poetry in mcgregor this year luckily again like a kind of mother’s milk and honey.
Tired of having to deal and make sense of my own stories, I was just too gladly relieved to be proudly melting and puffing up in a group soufflé for a change and getting glimpses of other lives and mothers and motherlands lost and found wanting to be located called by names in this is how it is on a life righting mission and a shepherd in the karoo showing us our inner dawns.
A scrabble of people and places in a maze map puzzle and the worlds inbetween.
Philippa from Sudan to SA and Saartjie Baartman van gamtoos tot parys.
And how writing can help life right the past and heal sometimes even others in other lifetimes giving gods a proper burial or just communicating their truth like kind of messenger mediums between mysterious soul sites.
(Glad that I could speak my bit of profound penguin mind too thank you! )
Tricky to absorb all the wordsworth who’s who where what of the weekend world before getting fogging up gone like the mountain top before snow. Then I could look out for my stewardess dawn with her story suitcase and missy my roommate recognizable as that girl in the book and other signposts on the kronkled aloe farm road to warmth and food.
In the end a white blanket did cover the weekend’s high mountain tops to be recovered again and again afterwards I guess.
And snowy bossies somehow appeared everywhere showing the way under rainbow and full moon.
A soft white freezing of things to clearly crystallize and melt away again to flow and make space for next new times.
On my way home I turned down at Rooiberg,
following the gravevine rabbit to my parents’ and grandparents’ gravesite to pay my tributes and respects thanking poetry in life.
Eerste bloeisels van Vinkrivier na Nuy vi my mapa oumapa...en n roos van 'ant magg' en poetry in Mcgregor met kapok op die berge en kapokbossies al langs die pad van 'ant mieimie takkap' af al wat lyk en ruik na skaapwol onder n reënboog op volmaan..my ouma is op so n sneeudag 40 jaar gelede begrawe …my ma dartel laf saam soos n feëtjie voëltjie en los speelse spoortjies op die pad..kyk da kyk da bossies blommetjies voeltjies watertjies en gediggies versiersel..en n vlakhasie wat zik zak wegkruipertjie speel oppad grafplaas toe..hasie hoekom is jou stert so kort sou sy sê en wie weet waar willie wegwaai woon…en kyk hoe die water oor die klippies klater blink blank blou soos mamma nou..en my ouma met haar blou lippe hiklag in haar sakdoek saam, en ek voel biki wit gewatte tussen lewe en dode se grensdrade heen - wie het altemit al die kampies opgemaak - en nog altyd gehou van blou lipsticks..ns mamma sou gesê het dat ouma sou gesê het mens dra nie rooi pienk oranje rooi klere saam soos ek vandag spesiaal agter die plaasmense aan het nie - dan sou ek antwoord ons rangskik dan die blomme so saam…
