I do not know if they are lonely, the great cats.
I see the poachers testing the freshness of scat
carefully avoiding traps they have dug.
It doesn’t matter what kind of animal stumbles into the hole
they will kill it, eat its liver and sell the parts to local shamans.
The bush is a dangerous place.
What does my anguish matter here? Something the color of death
has plunged through the air,
over the traps, and is gone.
The night sky is blossoming with a million hard diamonds.
The Earth is alive with a million sounds of night
Africa is the secret of creation,
yet something has just gone lonely into the bush.