In The Afternoons (Free Verse Sonnet) Poem by Gert Strydom

In the afternoon countless lightning bolts do bash into eternity
when in the summer days rain do fall almost every afternoon
and poems of my memories of Heidelberg do begin
where I smell the blue-white intense air when the thunders roar,
remember the farm with maize, sometimes sunflowers and cattle,
how partridges and guinea fowl, sometimes warthogs do destroy the fields,
how a farmer does lift his eyes to the sky and knows how to serve the Lord God
and almost everything do depend on a big successful maize crop,
how soft en very hot the red-sand can be on feet,
how menacing geese like guard dogs can keep people away from a yard
but as a child I feared almost nothing in life
and knew how dog-tame horses, sheep, goats and cattle looked upon man
but everywhere God did accompany me while I climbed the hillocks
when in the distance the dam did gleam tempting and muddy.

© Gert Strydom