Your brother Khaki Weed has given
you a bad name: Black Jack they call him;
the hiker's curse; as ubiquitous
as the devil, without his charm. Drives
prospectors to blistered socklessness;
invades, like pricking desire, knickers;
clings to the ears of cocker spaniels;
stains trouser bottoms; makes fingers stink;
lodges in the corner's of cow's eyes;
starts skin rashes which sometimes fester
like lilies in old wreaths. You stink too,
Marigold. You give off a pungent,
khaki odour of crushed beetles, soil,
old men, hat linings, ointment and dung.
And yet I love your smell - your odour -
better than a million Krugerrands
carpeted around a city hall;
better than your fancy Latin name
Tagetes; better than your native
Mexico in Aztec times; better
than your cousin, that reliable
annual the Calendula. Yes,
better even than your glorious
crinkly, flaky, golden head-pieces
which adorned my mother's garden like
moultings from the noonday summer sun.

It's really your brother that I love.
Your odour reminds me of Black Jack,
and Black Jack, ou Khaki Bos, reminds
me of Colleen Bawn where we flourished.
I remember one school holiday
when a bunch of us hiked to Jessie
Hotel, drank a Coke at the petrol
pump, and hiked back. Sixteen miles for what?
A Coke and tackies full of black jacks.
I remember going prospecting
with my father, following his wide
back through parched mopani veld, across
vleis where lilies grew, down dry dongas
looking for quartz reefs; occasionally
stopping to drink from my father's World
War Two bottle, and to pluck black jacks
from our stockings. And I remember
a girl with shiny brown hair - the things
we did on the golf course by the glow
of a genial moon.
I believe
the moon still visits there. But Puza
the Simpson's old spaniel is dead now,
and Fred is in Cape Town, and Gillie
is married, and Taz was killed by 'terrs',
and Bob's gone religious, and the old
cow down at the dam is Fray Bentos,
and I am overseas, looking out
for marigolds to finger and sniff.