Post by Elsje Stander

𝐆𝐫𝐲𝐬-𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐮 Hallo Lug. Jou grys-blou leegheid laat my staar en staar asof ek jou totale volume probeer bepaal. Bome staan stil verstar. Klein koppies wat nuuskierig, versigtig verskyn en dan vinnig vlieg van tak tot tak in ’n lae lyn. Duifies bly sit soos nat, verkluimbolletjies opgepof. Net die kraaie is reeds vreesloos onbeskof, wat dit met oop vlerke naby jou waag, wat kras en jou onnadekend daag. Maar ek en die klein voëltjies met moed sing saggies ons liedjies en hoop jy het jou vir eers nou uitgewoed. (c) Elsje Stander, 2014-07-27 There are seasons in a life that leave an imprint so deep that the body remembers them long after the details have changed. Over the past few months, I’ve been revisiting poems I wrote twelve years ago, and I was struck by how familiar the emotional landscape still feels. Back then, I was carrying too much: a child in crisis, a husband in emotional collapse, a career under pressure, a household stretched thin, health issues. Today the circumstances are slightly different, but the emotional architecture echoes the same pattern of responsibility, vigilance, tenderness, depletion, and hope against hope. It’s what people like Gregg Braden call “fractal time”: not the repetition of events, but the repetition of states when life places you in a similar configuration – echoes of each other across the years. Reading 𝐺𝑟𝑦𝑠-𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑢, I realised it was a portrait of my inner horizon in 2014: the grey-blue emptiness, the stillness, the small brave parts of myself trying to sing, the harsh intrusions of fear, and the quiet plea for the storm to pause. I recognised that inner state of sorrow as an echo of earlier points in my life, and I can see the echo of it again in the years from 2021 to 2026. What feels different now is that I can see the pattern clearly. I’m no longer drowning in it. I’m not the girl of 1991 or the woman of 2003, 2014, 2020 or 2021. I’m someone learning to care without carrying everything, to support without absorbing collapse, and to let my own voice rise even when the sky feels heavy, efforts feel in vain, and the future looks frightening. And that is how I know the pattern of my life is breaking. 𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑬𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒐𝒆𝒎 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒚 𝑬𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒔𝒖𝒃𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒔: 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞-𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐲 Hello Sky. I stare and stare into your blue-grey emptiness as if, by doing so, I could measure your entire vastness. Trees stand frozen, locked in stillness. Tiny heads appear – curiously, cautiously, then dart quickly from branch to branch in low formation. Doves remain perched: wet, puffed-up little balls of blue-grey cold. Only the crows are already fearlessly, rudely bold — challenging you with their harsh cries, wings spread wide. But the tiny birds and I, we dare to sing our songs softly, hoping you have, for now, spent your wintery, woeful wrath. (c) Elsje Stander, 2026-07-03