GHAAP - Sonnets from the Northern Cape

Ghaap
Sonnets from the Northern Cape
by Michael Cope

The slope moves downhill to the water, planed and grooved

in the rules of flow, the slow ice grinding stone on stone

endlessly, cold after cold, until the land broke and moved

apart. The floor remains, formed as growth forms bone.

There is no such thing as time: it’s a concept we hold

to handle change. A floor is marked by hard water seeking

the way downwards. It is not ‘smoothed’ or ‘old’ –

things transform. The backs of writhing snakes making

free with rain found a river, danced in waves, the aeons

roiling, high and low water. They called. People came

to the serpents to mark the cyclic flow, chipping with stones

the periods of their passing: pattern on pattern, the same

nested in the same, flow in flow, and in the flow
soft skin apprehending; water, sunlight, reeds, ripple, now.