Winter – The landscape of truth

Chocolate box scenes of verdant colour are embraced by all.  We enjoy a visual cacophony, the optical equivalent to a big band cranked to the max.  What about the soul searing notes of a lone bagpipe?  The simplicity of winter reveals the bare bones of life.  Dried stems clutch dormant seeds.  The seed may be greater than the bloom, potential waiting for the water of life.  The latent energy of what will be, speaks of new beginnings.

Winter’s landscape is a beautiful woman stripped of adornments.  Her perfect contours naked, clothed only in shifting shadows.  Winter is more than death, it is a simple reminder that everything passes, nothing stays the same.

Passing Sterkfontein Dam on the R74 in the Drakensberg, my soul knitted with undulating grass, not dead brown but waves of innumerable hues and shades.  Blue water more alluring when set in the contrast of dry land, a solitaire sapphire not lost in the jewel box of summer colour.  Water’s deep hues contain wordless poetry and metaphors of life.  The blue prose humbles my every effort to chain life in words.

I am now struck by the irony that I have used flowery words to describe the opposite.  Perhaps it would be more fitting to strip them down to a 6 line poem.

Mother earth

Stripped by winter’s hand

Reveals honest beauty

In naked land

Seeds hold hope of dreams unborn

Sapphire waters reflect purest  form