Frank Meintjies
“Little artist within” and “Oceanic”

Little artist within

Rise and twirl
from the calcified bowl
that is my skull

Dance

sing

portray

stretching voice

toe impressions in the sand

And then pirouette
to raw idea
again

Oceanic

(written to mark World Oceans Day 2023)

Seen from afar
it’s blue, it’s a dot, like Sagan says
Not a full stop; rather
a powerful new sentence, dot-dot-dot, beginning

That blue is the mighty waters
(moon-ebb, sun-flow, currents
swells and rip-fabric, all mingled)
and we swim in it, I/you/we
whales, orcas, crayfish, salmon, the humble tilapia
I/you wade in it, near Dwesa mouth
penguins, birds, crabs four-footed animals

This is our world; more flow than wall
More give than fence
More poem than thesis, baring its lines, footnotes, certainties

I once came to emergence
I nearly drowned; astray, in dives and crannies
The ways found me
Linking us through vines, lianas, stipes and tassels

My blue (with a few dry spots), my home

Frank Meintjies works in the field of social development. Frank’s creative writing has been included in several South African anthologies. He also frequently contributes to the world of poetry through participation in readings. His poetry collections are Unfettered Days, Connexions and My Rainbow. During the height of the Covid pandemic (2020, 2021), he produced three chapbooks, Lockdown Poems, Lockdown Poems: Second Wave and Lockdown Lines: Third Wave.