Like My Father Before Me Poem by Gert Strydom

Like my father before me,
and in the way that my son,
my daughter will do
I have sprouted from this fertile land

have felt the rain falling in big drops
upon the red-brown hot sand,
have smelt new life springing forth
from the wetness of rain,
from the wetness of human seed

I have smelt the sulphur of blue-white thunder,
have experienced the wonder
of seeing new seedlings bursting
right through the ground

and this continent of Africa
where the sun hangs
in a cobalt blue sky,
will as long as I am living
be home to me.