at ten minutes to one on a Monday night
and the little brown frogs in the sedges by the sullage
smelt it too-
randy as rutting Valentinos of the veld,
they cried and copulated in a wave of heat
that blew in on a gate-crashing gale.
I felt spring ride in on a sky-tide,
while the wind thumped a bamboo tattoo
against the timbers of the house.
I smelt the armpits of the spring and swooned
at the damp, the must, the salt-tinged fustiness,
the stamen stink of long-damp mast,
mould, mullock and marl:
the hammocky pubic stench of the ground on the make,
the compost mound on the prowl,
terra firma slobbering in her sleep,
rolling over in a wet dream of wattles weighing
their tiny tufts of bum-fluff,
daffodils blurting from mucousy stems,
green nubbins of leaf spurting from neat waxed sheaths.
I heard spring barging over the ridge,
shouldering her way through the peppermint gums,
knocking leprous old limbs from willows,
head-butting branches gone sodden inside,
bulging and soft as mealie meal
and bracketed with fungi like big crinkled lips.
I felt the old world come into season, again-
felt her flank-twitching and nickering,
neighing and tail-flicking like a nanny pacing the fence-
pacing, her disgraceful old heart racing,
her tail an engorged banner of wantonness.
I felt the spring straining and straddling;
she came like a crazy, addled thing,
rapacious and drooling;
open-mouthed! oh! so voracious,
sweet bee-stung slattern of September,
this nipple-grazed and brazen spring.
Do you remember?
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