KAROO MUSINGS

GANORA GUEST FARM –
‘Give us one day and we will give you 250 million years’.
This is an extraordinary and wonderful farm just outside Nieu Bethesda in the karoo.

The Village Inn in the centre of the village of Nieu Bethesda

Old 19th Century schoolhouse on the Groenfontein Road just outside Calitzdorp

A gentle northern sun warms my heart
A buzzing bee, a slight vibration
Not bothersome.
A troop of baboons bickering
in the valley below
Their feeding ground, their land
Where I am supposedly
tolerated as a visitor.
As I am tolerated on the planet
for a flash of time.
Watching a group of friendly field mice
dart in and out of the stone wall
Edging towards one of many birds
whose names
I, as a city slicker, do not know.

Stillness opens the mind
Spaciousness envelops
the spirit.
I, an urban alien,
fall prey to illusion of nature as peace.
And yet,
some of this is true
Physically other energies unfold
And the sky at night
dazzles with milky stars.

I look up there
I remember
my ancestors
and others
Comforting to feel
them watching down on us
And waiting
For our turn
To dissolve into that
vast infinity.
World without end.