By MAEDER OSLER
Like many others, I’ve always wanted to be a poet – at least from time to time; for a start and before a finish. And now, on New Year’s Day 2025, a new friend, Mike Alfred, has sent me a poem especially for Toverview titled ‘Two great grampas’.
His message was delightfully to the point: ‘Hi Maeder, herewith a recently written poem. Hope you might use it. Have a good New Year. Cheers.’
This follows the gift of a volume titled Heartlands – 15 poems by Mike Alfred, published in August 2024. According to mIke, the title poem, ‘Heartlands’, written after a visit to a friend’s lonely farm in the Laingsburg district between the Witteberge and the Swartberge returning through Seweweekspoort.
But that’s a poem for another day,, so to speak. Our New Year’s poem follows:
Two great grampas
both widows,
who haven’t seen each other for
some years, meet at a family Xmas
lunch. They’re seated opposite one
another at one end of the table;
they eat and drink, talk politely.
When the main course is over and
they are enjoying the Pavlova, one
asks the other, ‘did you ever envisage
this?’ ‘What?’ The other gestures
down the table. ‘Oh!’
There sit their offspring,
son and daughter. And of the son and
daughter’s offspring, three sons are
present, one married, whose wife has
born twin boys, barely eight months old;
busy being adored and bounced, gnawing
mielies, sucking biltong.
Four generations at table. Four generations
Indeed, signifying this rather grand concept
of random chance called love, with one travelling
Grampa falling instantly in love with a woman
who served him in a café, the other, who offered
a lift to a woman standing at a bus stop. No, of
course not, they concur.
‘No, not at all, no idea. But isn’t it a wonder!
A wonder. Sounds rather grand, generations.
And so it is.
Lovely … one takes it for granted and then one realizes just how special it really is!
Love your poem Maeder. Sort of close to our generation story.
Yes, It would be lovely to sit at a family gathering with 4 generations. A pity though, with circumstances in the country one lives in , that almost everyone we know, has had families torn apart by political tragedies and those old family gatherings are very difficult to repeat. However, they live strongly in our aged memories.