The Dance Of The Wind Poem by Gert Strydom

I

Round and round
I see her skipping dancing and turning
between lumps of sand
that blows up rejoicing, where she is turning about.

She is shaking her hips,
calls the leaves, the flowers and trees
drawing fluttering lines of sand
swishing drops out of streams.

The game gathers when she sweeps past,
stand with nostrils pointed
as worshipers, lost in her worship
while grains of sand whipping against them

and she is cheering glad,
runs past crossing them.


II

Her fresh smell permeates softly to me
in her joyful waltz
as she turns again and again cheerful around me,
she smells as gardenia and wild wormwood.

She drives clouds on as a cloak
spreads the rain like confetti just where she is going
and the ground, plants, insects and small animals rejoice
with the thunderbolts whipping the whole time,

exalting about life and the freshness that she is bringing,
on big and small drums her marriage is proclaimed,
while the flashing is everywhere around her
and she invites everybody spiritual and sinful

as guests of honour to her celebration
to get new life.


III

Her fingers stroke
soft and cool over my cheek
when she plays past me
and swings out here and there, scared that I might catch her.

Mischievously she pulls at trees and branches
sweeps spinning, twisting and turning
over the roofs of houses and buildings
like a child full of merriment the whole time translucent

and she spreads her cloak
blows the clouds closer to each other
making sure that the whole world knows
that it’s her wedding day

but when I look again
she suddenly is gone, has disappeared.

[Reference: Die dans van die reën (The dance of the rain) by Eugene N. Marais.]