Right Against The Morass Poem by Gert Strydom

Forward I stride
in the mind's swamp
immersing at places,
bogged down
in the damp mud
struggling on
treading were feet
had stamped before
through painful thoughts
and more happy ones.

Curtained off by swelling fog
rising all around me,
blotting out the copious flow
of the river of the soul
and the only thing
I am able to see
is the treads that I leave
below my feet, ever trampling on
through foul smelling, rotting weeds.

In front of me emerging
from all of this
a little hillock rises majestically
and I see hundreds of rock rabbits
running to and fro
along its slopes
and the nearer I get
the earth becomes more firm underfoot.
Orange-red aloes grow here and there,
Sugar-bushes with huge blooming Protea-flowers
are cupped in splendour in colours of red, white
and pink, scented sweet,
are all around me everywhere
as if I have stumbled
into a little piece of heaven
right against the morass.