City Lights & Woodland Nights Poem by Alistair Plint

The farmer's stale eyes
looking upward
to the skies
this twenty sixteen, spring
September wasn't raining
left the earth dry
deserted & deathly
Boreholes, dry-mouthed in drought
The dam
is muttering "18 percent capacity"
she'd cry, if she had tears
Those farmers stale eyed
staring upward
in fields of dust
a truthful aqua lust

I'm late for a meeting, tonight
it's the end of October
Guys in the trenches
are waiting for paper, that says their banks
pay better
I'm high-tailing, the freeway
Surprisingly
night skies light up
A natural celebration
preparation for Diwali
Static in the air, making
electric dreams
Hail starts pounding
gusts of power-wind
blow new leaves off arms
of trees
leaving the motorway iced;
branched
flashing in eyes
through thunderous cracks

Storms on the Highveld
are a google
search term
they're as famous in our home
as Barack Obama is in yours
only see them once or twice
a year.
There's a lady who claims she
can smell them coming
& when they start, the kids wear faces
of fear
I'm enduring this freeway drive
The "where are you" mobile ringtone
is bending the ear, in the background
behind the crashing of
ice on steel
rain pelting tar
cracks come with bolts
of natural electricity
breaking clouds

Truth is
we aren't built for this
neither are our cars
nor the nominally dry-tyres
or oil surfaced roads, who spent a year
sun tanning, dreaming of bubble pools
&swiming baths
The cars are slip-ing over this road-surface
like olympic figure skaters
practicing ballotté
accross frozen duck ponds
The windscreen's a murky misty clouded
eye-sore
Seeing is
not the sense, feeling safest
in this moment

15 minute driving
turned into an hour
back lights, waving goodbye to city lights
between clickety clicks of emergency indicators
Bright front fog lights are aiming
toward that
"outta town feelin"

Under the suspension bridge
feeling the beating the hammered steel endures
Thought of stopping under it
waiting the hail bricks out

Looked up

speechless

The rearview mirror reflects a city
electric & drenched
a river of water
gushing towards dreams, in fancy offices

speechless

The view in front of this bridge
dry
sad
farmland
with a
farmer
in a dusty field
waving
clouds in
Towards a single
slouched
dehydrated
hyperthermic sunflower


burnt in the living



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