Near Christmas Day Poem by Gert Strydom

I see your face reflected
in the window of the car
where it's raining and we are driving for hours
and big-eyed you look while the rain do splash down,
in the distance there are windmills and barns
and it's as if the rain is washing everything clean
and yet a ray of sunshine does gleam over the walls of a homestead
when we hit water and are sliding,

do luckily glide over an empty traffic light
with a red dot of the sun in a fiery-pattern
and it's as if this moment is holy,
further away the sky is open and clean
with strangely here and there dots of fog
where the veldt portrays a horde of wild flowers
and in all of this God's presence is coming to meaning
and when over other crossroads we drive into the city,

the streets are deserted and Picasso-red
when the sun sets and decorated for Christmas
and I wonder if the people do truly know God,
do invite Him into their hearts

see a Father Christmas in a park distributing gifts
and he is suddenly enveloped in light or maybe I did only imagine it,
where poor children in rags stand around him
and we do drive into the city to our home.

© Gert Strydom