WE ARE STILL HERE RONEL

Painting by Alphonse Mucha



As we lay on the grass,

savouring and saving the world,

pretending our future is not diminishing

and Mother Earth hasn't been abused,

we profess our love to every living creature,

breathing a kind of peace we will never have.

For some minutes you forget apartheid

and I ignore twenty years of dictatorship,

celebrating life as it should be when

we were teenagers.

A wave of solidarity wash through us

and we go from oblivion to calm resignation

as we paint our memoirs, drinking our semi-sweet wine.

The whole world belongs to us:

trees, stars, oceans, flowers, mountains

no matter how difficult it might have been

for us to believe we were human beings too.

We are still breathing in spite of

blindness, ignorance, violence, intolerance.

We are still here.

Let's enjoy our picnic:

Our hour is here.

Our time is now.

Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2011