Rod MacKenzie's Blog

The Rain during Covid-19

* * * The rain has such precise teeth. She nibbles down the paths and through the bushes, along the gutters and around my veranda chair like a cat. Who knows that she is gobbling us up, swallowing us down? When will she finish?   When eyes smell the stillness and see the music, droplets...

How often he’s tried to touch death

  *** “How often he’s tried to touch death”   How often he’s tried to touch death Caress the cheeks    make them familiar Wipe away flecks of blood Or crumbs off death’s chin Perhaps he should shave death’s face Use lipstick and ear rings   make the gender a man One that prefers intimacy with other...

The loneliness of immigration

You’re not here – To Marion   I   In the storm the woods around our home are bewildered, The leaves snarling, tearing at the end of their leashes. You’ve been away for a few days. In this wind an arching, rustling autumn Of whistling twigs, blades and stalks Rip the guts out of the...

‘The Faith of Christopher Hitchens’ and how ‘intellectuals’ miss the point

It is always an excellent time to write a sensational, controversial memoir about a public figure after his death, not before. The person is not there to defend himself. Larry Taunton is an avowed Christian and his book, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens is elegantly written and immensely readable. But, as compelling and compassionate as the book’s argument...

Which “South Africa” do you live in?

People sometimes ask me, ‘Don’t you miss South Africa?’ ‘No,’ I reply – but in the same heartbeat that  answer is given comes my silent question, which South…

Which “South Africa” do you live in?

People sometimes ask me, ‘Don’t you miss South Africa?’ ‘No,’ I reply – but in the same heartbeat that  answer is given comes my silent question, which South Africa? ‘You’re criticising South Africa Rod, the country you grew up in, that fed and clothed you, gave you an education, everything you have. Not cool.’ The same question rises….which...

Celebrating the language of stars in the wake of the supermoon

The earliest hanzi, stars are a language to master before dawn. Quick – before they trickle away, leaving everything hushed and open-mouthed. This is why your fingers come together in a woven calligraphy, to catch and caress prayers like polished stones. Your fingers know the twinkling leaves in the trees around you are synonyms for...

Sacredness, antiphons and transplanting a lemon tree

A certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house…   The silence is all-consuming as I work with spade and hands. As if from far away, I hear my own breath deep in my body, deep in the caves of woodland braided with the smell of sea. Waves nearly splash on their shadows. I...

For the anally correct and the politically retentive

To my impish mind the human bottom with its neat, vulnerable, curved groove looks like a huge smile. Think of the proverbial plumber in his too tight jeans, on his knees sweating over a drain pipe: he always has a smile from behind, sometimes a little hairy. Half-exposed bottoms cause giggles and bring us down...

From Columbine to Orlando: Why bother having children?

The most harrowing book I have read is the one I have just finished, the recently published memoir-journal, A Mother’s Reckoning, by Sue Klebold, parent of Dylan Klebold, one of the two teenage murder-suicide shooters of the Columbine school massacre in 1999. Though tragic, it is unfortunately not that uncommon for parents to deal with...