Botswana
The drift of woodsmoke
Its tendrils curling through
the air
The kettles set to boil above
the licking flames
As we sit around the campfire
Staring into embers
Listening to the grumble of
distant thunder
The intermittent flash of
lightning
Across the far horizon
Through the darkening clouds
Threatening the coming of the
long-awaited rains
We gaze across the scrubland, the
wasted desert
And the arid desiccation of
the salt pans
The calm of the delta shattered
By cicadas screeching in the
cooling air
And the booming of lions
calling in the night
Then we remember sipping
rooibos by the river
The journey of giraffes, the
dazzle of zebras
And the disputatious baboons,
chattering and screaming
The subsonic rumble of
elephants
In the land of trunk and tusk
and trumpeting
The circling of vultures,
aerial indicators
Then the smell of the kill
Ripped and torn and freshly
flayed
Guts and blood, white and red
Spilled upon the dusty ground
And under the early starlit
sky
The bleached bones of earlier victims
Long finger-shadows cast
By the burning disc of a
sinking sun
No comments:
Post a Comment