With A Bottle In His Hand Poem by Gert Strydom

I see a lightning flash
in the night
and it cuts past flats
and it draws a blue white line,
on its way down
to where it hits a tree
in the old park.

When darkness blinds me,
there’s a cigarette that glows red
and a old man sitting on a bench.

He protests with a bottle in his hand:
“Lord, take your thunder.
Not even God, can stop Kerneels Bester
to take a drink.”

The old man laughs as if mad
and takes a long drink,
before he presses the bottle
into the air.

With the bottle above his head
the man stands against the weather
and like that he still stands,
when the first big drops begin to fall
and I hear another thunder roll.