Welcome to 'The duPs' - The website of Paul and Margaret du Plessis - Margaret a former Medical Social Worker, Paul a physician.
They served with The Salvation Army in Zambia, the United Kingdom, India, and their homeland of South Africa. They retired to live in Bromley, in southeast London. Margaret passed away in 2019.
Their children, Catherine and Andre, and the wider family have always meant a lot to them. Placing Paul’s poems and other information on a website has been a family request for some years. Grandson, David, took on the project and became the website architect.
Please enjoy reading Paul's poems which reflect something of their life experiences.
Margaret has researched the life of Louisa Mary Tucker, the first wife of pioneer Indian missionary, Frederick Tucker.
Please use the menu on the left and the search function in the top right to navigate through the site.
Here is Paul's most recent poem:
The Common Snipe
- Details
- Written January 2020
They stood there gawking, staring, gazing -
Twitchers out to find something different;
Gaping through the downstairs window glass,
Magnifying me with a zooming lens
Piercing the morning mists that hang
Silent over the waters of a shivering day,
Insulated in the depths of winter.
When all I want is to wriggle and hide,
Camouflaged from the world beyond,
Nestled among bank-side twigs and grass,
Hidden as though I didn’t exist
And belong nowhere but to myself,
Until I see the grub moving,
So my curved beak pecks - and they snap me.
January 2020