(2)
In the long grasslands,
a secretary bird, all flap and stumble.
What you gonna do today?
Huh?
Heaves legs of wood
and wings of sail—
the scale comical.
Huh?
I dunno, what d’you wanna do?
As if body parts came
from other creatures.
My girl says, Hey gorgeous,
and the bird pounds the ground
with heft feet.
plunges its beak into the earth
ostrich-like,
resurfaces, flips,
a spinning top motion,
twists like a Swan
Lake tutu
dancer in drag,
and into the air soars
a mouse
green bundle of scrap,
its last breath
a shock of dirt and batter.
And my girl and her fella
squat
in the magenta-sapphire light
of late afternoon,
shooting slow motion
the chop.
And she shoots the secretary bird,
replete,
in a tree
in a moon
I dunno, what do you wanna do?
And a small herd
of elephant drifts by,
one scarred pregnant female.
And my girl shoots
way past the point
of available light.
And into the dusk, a jackal,
and down to the pan,
a pair of warhog, mud-rollicking.
It becomes a game, their tails sticking out.
And my girl shoots a rock,
which rises
to become a male lion, eye on her
and her fella, gearing up
with a tripod,
extra-long lens under his arm,
stealth to the baobab,
vlei grass tickling bare legs,
while she sits, licking sun-
cracked lips, shooting
take after
take, of this,
panoramic, far,
far,
from any pandemic.
This story belongs to my daughter, Micaela Hamilton, a wildlife documentary maker in Zimbabwe. Thanks Micaela - yours has to be the best lockdown experience!
Sunset photo courtesy of Micaela Hamilton and Neil Fairlie.
