BENEATH MY OLD BAOBAB TREE:

My body sits alone in this hurdy-gurdy, concrete, European city,

While this crazy fast world rushes by me without a smile nor pity,

In my soul I sit beneath my dear old friend, my African baobab tree,

Drinking in the floral white fragrance of the pretty chincherinchee.

The buzzing of traffic makes way for the gemsbok running in herds,

No longer the noisy din of cars, only the songs of lyrical African birds,

The plodding footsteps of the commuting dazed & dull looking crowds,

Morph into grey elephants saluting the overhead scudding white clouds.

The dirt & cold hardened pavement that hurts my restless African feet,

Is really soft red dust where the rhino roam & the old wildebeest bleat,

The fast-food frying, the hot-dog stands & the unending petrol fumes,

Are now the aromas of the Kalahari, the aromatic & herbal perfumes.

The beggars, buskers, the pimps & the whores, all gone & are no more,

Leaving me with the eagle, meerkat, the leopard & lion with gaping jaw,

The shouting & touting, the screeching brakes of the smoky sooty cars,

Give way to the orchestra of silences & echoing African drums from afar.

The ancient golden Bushman is the man I see standing upon distant hill,

Not the sad brief-cased & be-suited gent I see popping stressed out pill,

The city drained cockroach, the cur & the dirty black vermin sewer rat,

Become the little dung beetle, the eland & the big slinking stalking cat.

The icy cold, the wind, the creeping damp & the drab rainy city grey,

Now turns & warms me, dressed in hot vibrant & sunny African day,

Where my poor weary body is prisoner here, my mind is forever free,

Where it sits beneath the ancient shade of my old African baobab tree.