Paddingtontucker

Africa is a pile of riches
Guarded by children and cattle
Africa is an ode to rainfall
Powerful like a bolt
A shack in the wind
A diamond rough under red sand
The tender bokkie ambles in the acacia bush
The old world polite smile
The colonial angst of peril and ***
The dark maiden’s passive zest
The white man’s arid humour
The languid sangoma
Who sings through the metallic fields
The barking zebra whose stripe
Like a lollipop struts its heals
and the insects who cluster 
around every square inch of earth