On the way to Uniondale
One stormy Easter weekend
while I was driving on route sixty-two,
I found a beautiful girl
next to the road
just twenty kilometres from Uniondale
at the Barandas turn off,
the wind was swishing through her dark hair
and I heard it cry over the Kammanassie Mountain
and her thumb was out asking for a lift.
I brought the car to a standstill
and next to the road red allows were flowering
and she was dressed in a navy blue jacket,
and dark green pants
and I was worried that she was getting cold
and in the inside light of the BMW
she looked whitely pale
and smiled brilliantly
when we drove away
and when I asked where she was going
and she just answered
that she was coming along
which was kind of strange.
I still wanted to ask
what a lovely girl was doing alone
next to the road
when I smelled the apple blossoms
of her perfume
and she suddenly laughed shrilly
and the car door next to her
opened and closed and she was gone
and immediately I stopped the car
as I was sure that the woman
had jumped out.
Outside the car the road was empty
and while I walked up and down
without finding a sign of her
a police patrol car came along
and parked behind my car
and the constables were convinced
that I had given a lift to a ghost
and they called her Marie Charlotte Roux
and said that during Easter weekends
she wanders along that road
and to them my narrative
was an old well-known story.
[...] Read more
poem by Gert Strydom
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