In The Back Garden With Benji And Cleo Poem by Diana van den Berg

Wrapped in a timeless glow
of sungold light
and open heavens of ocean-blue
and tweets and twitters
of little friends
in bouncing branches
almost finger-close,
I bask, I waft, I float, I dream
on solid wings of joyous comfort.

Cleo purrs and stretches
and preens her tortoiseshell coat
and rolls in sun-worshipping bliss
in green-sweet grass

and Benji darts here and there
on multiple grown-puppy missions
and pauses
and flashes a million ponder-thoughts
across a little professor-face

and there an insistent purple-crested lourie
revs his call
and dulcet Zulu voices trill
in melodic trance
and unobtrusive sounds of activity
take up a bar or two
and faintly cars buzz lazily
on a distant hidden highway
and blend with barely audible whispers
of television voices I forgot to still inside
and hadedahs burst into resonant laughter
as they pass, adding bass tones of rich delight

and then the exuberant splash of colours wild
on aloe and bush and neighbour’s washing line...

and that aeroplane
that Rimsky-Korsokovs its way
somewhere unseen
over the hills and far away
for a zesty variation on the theme...

Oh, how, my father, God,
do you compose
for me
a painted symphony
so unique
and quiver-sweet
every precious day
in this, my golden hour?