Free Verse
Guardian angel
looking at a child
ah little child
taking warmth from me
and the Dover stove humming
God took a small pinch
from creation's clay ball
building you with
toothpicks and rice paper
loading your mind with doodles
of future nuclear bombs
without claws and serrated jaws
you remaining the most dangerous being
I worry
that gleaming
rail
i
pot bellied
boasting navels
shiny round ball bearing stomachs
haloing out of diesel grime
overalls and silver buttoned railway
insignias
these long waxed pig curled moustache workmen
rotated their lives between shifts of day and night
with metal lunch boxes and coffee tin flasks
strolling main road home or to that gleaming rail
that provided a town’s livelihood
my grand father worked that rail and my father too
providing me with the means
to take that broke back-heart break scenic route
out of town for good and forgetting
until now
ii
coming back
everything changed
and the fat men were now old and wiry
sitting on subsidized railway porches
looking on main road maybe thinking rail
going to that station i found it desolated
and the once shimmering humming rail all
rusted up and silent
on my knees and creasing my director slacks
i touched it and imagined the once proud spirit of it
corroding away as the blue collar folks on the porch
Martin Lochner,
ZA—Global
Correspondent Report on South Africa
