Back when it was hard to have an opinion

without risking certain dis-member-ment from

society or one’s body or death…the cab driver

 

in Soweto reminisced with a chuckle as he

drove his cab through and over the remnants

of white, colonial, Dutch “Boer” rule; glibly

 

a man in Midwest Dutch America offers opinions

and is considered for dis-member-ment from

said society and shunning, a different form of

 

death, because he speaks face-to-face which is

anathema and is not considered “Dutch Nice,”

let alone is he a real Hollander because he is a half-

 

breed Swede as he has been told?  But behind

one’s Dutch back, right here in Mid-America,

a Boer war or a boring war ensues which

 

outside of North and South Blenden on the

north and East Saugatuck and Graafschap

on the south, Bentheim on the east, Lake

 

Michigan, of course, on the west and Borculo

and Beaver Dam somewhere in between no-

body knows much about…much less even

 

cares about and certainly not the Dutch back

home in the old country who were just glad

to see the Zeelanders, et. al. go in 1847 waving

 

good riddance from the dock…much less

survivors of apartheid and the Boer Wars

of South Africa and the great freedoms

 

secured where the cabbie now drives. Oh,

for some enlightenment amongst these

Boers and their boring, “Dutch Nice”

wars.