Cuppa and Conversation Before Play

I'm sitting above ghosts
of action past
and yet to come.
45 minutes hence
white heroes will emerge
on checks of green,
in the nation's lens
from every angle,
in colour and infrared.
Sharing a cuppa,
thinking on the game,
he sits with me,
one moment trapped in woede
the next whimsy
channelled by an intelligence
rarely seen in the public seats.
The Gabba imitates our lives:
one side colour and humanity
the other screaming silent, lonely betreur.
We stand for a minute
as old men recall an Invincible Sam
for grandsons asking who.
In the cold, white, early Brisbane glare
his conversation is warm,
spoken or written.
I'm forced to think,
released to smile
... until a teenwind ruffles my pages
and he is gone,
straw hat bobbing in the colours
swallowed by his kompleksiteit
a camouflage of language
revealing only a skaduwee
from within his forever fortress.

Afrikaans words used in this poem are: woede - anger; betreur - regret; teenwind - contrary wind; kompleksiteit - complexity; skaduwee - shadow