Landscape

I wrote my first poem in English today. Outright English, not a translated version of one of my Afrikaans poems:

the horizon in Oz can never flatline
-too many trees turn it into little jagged edges-

I think back to the Free State
the vast flatness, the markedly clear lines
-flatlining in drought-
and how you could see beyond tomorrow there,
if you wanted to.

none of that here where ancient gum trees,
marking time,
stay upright

in the Lucky Country