Red Door Magazine 23

BRICK - By Ted Stenson - Calgary, Alberta, Canada
(for Angus)
VETKOEK VOETE - by Harry Owen.
A late summer banquet is spread
and the bats know it. From nowhere
they are here again in their hordes,
filling the warm gloom of our fig tree
with squabbles, squeals, squeaks, and gorging
on the fruit. Then in dawn light
those same vast branches welcome
a sudden applause of whirring
green doves and hosts of quieter
things that scatter figs like shrapnel to the
ground.
Nearby, stirring gently below,
swelling imperceptibly through jade
to ultimate red, the bessies
of cotoneaster prepare
their white-eyed feast, and wait and watch,
while on the stoep a little boy,
indulged, indulging, in a might
of love he’ll measure all his days by,
laughs, clambers, pads on vetkoek voete
deep into the world’s lavish morning.
Originally from Liverpool, Harry Owen moved to South
Africa from UK in 2008, where he had
been appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate for
Cheshire in 2003.
Outspoken in his commitment to the natural world
and a passionate advocate of poetry, he is the
author of eight collections, the three most recent
being Small Stones for Bromley (Lapwing
Publications, Belfast, 2014); The Cull: new and resurrected
poems (The Poets Printery, East
London, 2017); and All Weathers (theInkSword, Grahamstown,
2019).
He has edited three anthologies – I Write Who I Am:
an anthology of Upstart poetry (2011),
featuring the work of nineteen young poets from local
township schools; For Rhino in a
Shrinking World: an international anthology (2013),
supporting efforts to save the gravely
threatened rhino from extinction; and Coming Home:
poems of the Grahamstown diaspora
(2019).
Harry hosts the popular monthly open floor event
called Reddits Poetry in Grahamstown, in
South Africa’s Eastern Cape, where he lives.
ISSUE # 23 - LANGUAGE
43