Ongoing #27

Yet another sunset poem this time. The doodle shows a field. There are some sheep at the top, with instructions on how to draw them, but they look like clouds to me.

Sunset on the African Plains

The alchemy of sunset turns leaden clouds to gold,
Sets shadow fires among the trees as twilight takes a hold.
The plains are never silent, but now every hoot and howl,
Every shriek and roar and below, every cackle, every growl
Echoes through the world, like the cries of wandering souls,
And towards, around and through us, onward the thunder rolls.
But then the sun has gone, the clouds are black in black
And a kind of quiet falls along each darkened track.
It's a quiet filled with whispers and the rustling of grass
As beasts that hid in daylight disturb us as they pass.
And now and then a distant roar cuts off distant cries
As one creature finds a meal and another creature dies.
There is beauty in the symmetry, but a beauty fierce and raw,
That the march of day and night can only underscore.

Ongoing #25

For the next poem the cartoon in the book has the page divided into four vertical sections. The first shows a night scene of a graveyard with bats and a skeleton, the second a day scene with birds, butterflies and a smiling girl. The other two, where I have written the poem, are blank.

Two Nights: Two Days - Remembering Africa

Here, now,
the sky is empty
and not even black,
merely a darker grey.
The stars are gone
lost in the eternal twilight
of the technological world.

There, then,
the sky was crowded,
a million sequins
on a velvet cloth.
The stars eternal
were spirits of the night
and the land was empty.

Here, now,
the city screams
and the heat smells
of machinery.
The sun is gone
lost behind the haze
in a hidden sky.

There, then,
the plains murmured
and the heat smelled
of animals and dirt.
The sun was god
ruling a sharper world
from a lonely sky.