The Visit [2] Poem by Gert Strydom

I come from Pretoria
with the sun rising in a blue sky
to see where I lived as child
for more than thirteen years
and I will return home before it sets.

The change I notice
as I want to take the road
creeping past the dam
up the hill,
is that it exist no more
and a high fence
blocks off the dam.

The walkway across the dam
is overgrown and where the road
used to be
there now is grass and small trees
as if it never was
and the field where maize used to grow
does not exist anymore
and now is covered
with knee-high grass and weeds.

I walk miles back
to find a place
to cut across the veldt
and find the red roofed house
against the hillock
where it is dilapidated,
left without care
and it does not look
as if anybody still comes there

and the garden that I tended with care
have a few flowers still
that grows among the grass and weeds
and a puff adder that hisses at me
now dwells there.