Reunion

When we arrive at the airport,
will you be waiting for us dressed
in the colours of the union, waving
flags purchased in London town.
You know the ones you trophied
during the good old days before
they were sullied.

We will emerge wrapped in sunglasses, not quite
Police ones, wide-eyed at any rate in the African sun
ready with our talking irons, the mother of all
catch ups sizzling on the charcoals.
We can get worked up

into a lather about the blond blusterer,
now officially bored with a pandemic
he did not sign up for, his laziness dripping
like fat, knowing we will change nothing.

We will feel a whole lot better though,
putting the world to rights over a very cold glass
of Backsberg chenin blanc
– although I think you prefer a good red –
and rump steaks on the braai.

We can sit and idle away the time, re-wilding childhoods
only we remember. No matter what we will head for Hoekwil,
tuck into a Victoria sponge (go big or we go home)
and Cakey will be satisfied.

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© 2021 Copyright Rick Frame

I wrote this in prose form a year ago. Longing for a reunion, I revisited it and reworked the piece so as to capture a mood that seems unchanged from a year ago.

Turning cartwheels

It does not matter for a moment.
To understand the words that swayed
the room, skipping ‘the light fandango’*
transported fifty years, a life so different.

A seventeen year old unawakened,
only stirred by the seven single
spinning, the poetry reaching right in
still, breathing this early morning in a
different century. Beyond the cartwheels
a new understanding.

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© 2021 Copyright Rick Frame

*From the song, ‘A whiter shade of pale’ by Procol Harum

Somewhere close

To the question, nothing but a feeling of this:
An unbelonging is a commencement, to
arrive, to remake. There was a journey,
a return. Surely?

Like proudly wear the badge, a citizen
of nowhere, always somewhere geopolitical.
Even here, a coming home. Everything has its place

gathered long ago in star dust, where breathing
eventually gave life to the forming of words,
a belonging with flattened vowels.

They may be curious – or not, no matter – of place,
a discovery not far, quite close: the grandmothers
emerge on the savannah, the children
play under the acacia trees.

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© 2021 Copyright Rick Frame