Musings on life and music
Clouds,
Like rags,
Fly off rounded, rolling mountains,
Billowing like smoke,
Billowing like distant smoke
Covering the distant green
With white sheets of rain.
And lightning flashes,
Thunder roars and crashes,
Shaking the ground.
And Shaka, black-maned lion,
Returns the roar,
Challenging the heavens
As they pour and pound welcome water
Into dry and needy earth.
Copyright Reserved
Isabel Bradley©
8 January 2025
There,
Where setting sun
Paints trees and grass in gold and green;
There,
Where skies are high and big
And dapple the rolling hills with purple shadow;
Where elephant walks tall on cushioned feet
And kudu stand proud –
Curling horns reaching for the sky;
Where black-faced vervets
Dance in the trees,
And baboons bark and impala skip;
There,
Where owl glides,
Silent in the moonlight,
Or sits on skeletal tree,
Surveying all in mysterious monochrome;
Where rocks are rhinos
And giraffe hide, tall and gangly,
Behind feathery-leafed trees;
Where wind whips up waves
On the grass-covered plains,
And warthog strut and grovel and turn and run –
Antennae-tails high;
Where lion cough and roar
And leopard slinks, graceful,
unseen;
Where cheetah glides into whirlwind chase
And lands on kudu’s back –
Or stirs up dust-storms of wildebeest –
Then chirrups to her cubs
Who chirp back,
Sounding,
for all the world,
like tiny birds;
There,
Where the air is bright
And the bushveld gives off scents
Of herbs and musth…
There, the heart soars free
With eagles and darting-blue kingfisher;
There, heart and soul
Truly find peace.
© Isabel Bradley, 2017
