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Sarah Frost
Sarah Frost lives in Durban, South Africa. She has completed an MA in English Literature at UKZN and achieved a first class pass in a module in Online Poetry at Wits University. She won the Temenos prize for mystical poetry in the McGregor Poetry Competition in 2021. Her debut collection, Conduit, was published by Modjaji in 2011.
The dead move among us
The white feather on the footpath,the cowries on the rocky beach –signs brimming bright as unshed tearsthey see us, immobile in our grief.
No roars of loss, no cries of rage pierce the veil between our world and theirs,but still they come: from the silvery forests,the quiet seas, scattering flowersto remind us that they are not gone.
The calico kitten under the small girl’s bed,the hare in the empty courtyard.They bring us coins and portents,walk us back home through the dark.
No roars of loss, no cries of rage pierce the veil between our world and theirs,but still they come: from the silvery forests,the quiet seas, scattering flowersto remind us that they are not gone.
The calico kitten under the small girl’s bed,the hare in the empty courtyard.They bring us coins and portents,walk us back home through the dark.
A good death
My old cat creeps away to dieA garden corner his sickroom, and the wind for a nurseThese days, he comes to the house only for food and disappears again, Houdini-like,a grey-black shroud for the knuckles of his spine.
Sumptuous, late summer evenings, children swim swathed in blue chiffon,the after-rain storm lilies lean to kiss the grass.My daughter’s party dress flounces pink assunset clouds offering a soft-serve moon.
I find him one morning, as if asleep,curled like a kitten under a mothering tree.
Sumptuous, late summer evenings, children swim swathed in blue chiffon,the after-rain storm lilies lean to kiss the grass.My daughter’s party dress flounces pink assunset clouds offering a soft-serve moon.
I find him one morning, as if asleep,curled like a kitten under a mothering tree.
City of Gold
The plane trees are golden now, clasped prayerfulover roads my grandmother drove when we were childrenher memory is a sheaf of treasured photographs,I shuffle repeatedly, as if to bring her back.
She will not return, and I have lost a witnessher clear-seeing grey eyes that saw a lonely child.Now I walk these avenues full of light,looking for a way to let her go.
The busker on the street cornerblows into his golden saxophone, his songwinds around me as I take my daughter’s hand,Smoke from autumn leaf pile fires burns plangent in our nostrils.
She will not return, and I have lost a witnessher clear-seeing grey eyes that saw a lonely child.Now I walk these avenues full of light,looking for a way to let her go.
The busker on the street cornerblows into his golden saxophone, his songwinds around me as I take my daughter’s hand,Smoke from autumn leaf pile fires burns plangent in our nostrils.
