Langebaan

Damian Garside

North:
like needle to magnet

I am pulled.

Behind me
a tarred retrospective:
Koeberg Reactor
passed but a minute ago
its characteristic concrete bulge
now Lego-sized
shrunk down to an afterthought,
three miles back in my rear-view mirror

and further south, far south
deeper and
further

the caves of the strandlopers and
dawn of a species.

     ***

Here
at the lagoon

undercurrents
are everything

each prick-bubble world

struggles against the odds
strikes for the finite
for pure self-
preservation.

It will take ages of struggle, eons
of battle

before anything is dragged
to the excruciating edge of
first consciousness.

Tomorrow it is forecast
the storm will subside

the sea will favour

its mile-high birds
with perfect composure, the mirror-smooth face
of a truly placid meniscus.

     ***

I almost drowned once
in waters that could not have been calmer
(how can
depth be envisaged

if you
have not
almost drowned?)

That experience still haunts me
I switch on the TV and am, Mr. Mobius,
practically engulfed

wave front upon
                 wave front

simply breaking
right over me

my carbon life form
so swamped
a little, struggling
carbon life form

that I stumble, lose faith in
the doctrine of
unique configuration.

     ***

Gargling a prayer
I wonder aloud

whether the silk of our cells
is any
less

                 savage

than the endless cycle of predator and prey,
the ebb and flow of life on this planet.

Beneath the great drawing board of
correlations and coordinates

I look north towards the stars
that gird the equator, seemingly forever

hoping
to catch
in the salt of the breeze
some breath of the spirit

as it plays out the old and
                       the fading

in one last arabesque.

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