Picture Poetry

It is a grey day and it looks cold outside. A good time to take out the photo album and share some memories and bring a little bit of sunshine into the house. 'n Bietjie vannie Kaap (A little bit of the Cape) and at the same time acknowledging that we find stone walls everywhere in the world. We even sometimes build them up around ourselves. My wall is quite low so you are welcome to climb over sometime and share some tea and crunchies. The picture's story is at the end of mine. Thanks for the inspiration!


Stonewalled
A piece of history
Sent to me
It tells
A subtle springtime story
Fygies in my favourate colours
Just like you find
On the borders
Of most
Coastal graveyard walls
Desolute
Against the wind
A silent centry
Protecting souls
No longer
Desparate
Stonewalled

Carefully picked
Every crevice befitting
A labour of love
Not a beat seems to be missing
Every stone warily tendered
The smallest piece
Usefull rendered
Shades rustic
Lives
Short or tall
Wide or narrow
Straigth or square
Firmly to the earth
Surrendered

A stone hedge
It might be called
Centurie’s gifts
Sand and water
Piques a curiosity
Was the mason a miner
The miner a mason?
A modern day slave
Nurturing love’s labour
In perfect symetry
Trapped
A heart and mind
Collected, mapped
Stonewalled
In mystery enraptured

Words: Simone Noemdoe, inspired by the picture taken by Shawn W. Johnston who sent it to me with these words “I love and have this crazy obsession with old stonewalls. They all have a signature of their own. I'm always curious about the farm workers who constructed them. I spent a few hours examining some of the Karoo stonewalls in the Moordenaars and Agter Karoo”. So I take pics of them. Here is a pic of graveyard wall outside Strandfontein next to the Sishen-Saldanha railway line. This was taken on the day I counted 220 railway trucks and 10 locomotives bring the iron ore from Sishen.
Written: Sometime in 2009