Steenbok (Free Verse Sonnet) Poem by Gert Strydom

Under the sugar-bushes where the proteas flower
when the summer-sun does burn merciless in the blue sky
you will find it if you do look carefully in the veldt
where it sleeps in the shadows in the sugar-bush-hillocks
where it regards the world vulnerable, big-eyed
and agile runs away faster than a stormy wind
as that small animal can trust no human being
where I do find snares everywhere in the footpaths
that the natives do set to try and catch it
but in the late afternoon when the sun is setting,
when it hangs low over the kopjes in the west
it runs down the hillocks at ease with the world
where it drinks at the stream near the marsh
and grazes tranquilly on the new young-grass.

[Poet's note:A Steenbok is a very small South African antelope that weighs about twelve kilograms, does become about fifty centimeters high and have got horns of up to eighteen centimeters.]

© Gert Strydom