In the drum chorus
talking time of spirits
in the thick hide of dusk,
I chant to the egret
The song of our friendship
From time now
To time begun.
An egret spirit
Who sits on my horn singing
Guiding me,
a child with no thought
But the song itself,
a song of Savannah,
Now gone,
Dead as dry bones.
With my horn I drum
To the Malaika spirits
Inviting you to dance
As you did,
when you slid,
down from the trees
To join me in this land of the spirits
Why do you not sing to me anymore?
Why do you always greet me
With the silences of bullets?
Close as you are, poacher,
I can scent the presence
Of greed in your slaughter
You think alone
as you die alone,
But an animal mind
Swells with the ghosts
Of all our kind
The rain-scented airs of night
That nuzzle the hook
of my muzzle,
Once star-bright with rhino stench,
Now reek of extinctions.
Notes:
The Black Rhino is Critically Endangered. Between 1968 and 1995 hunters and settlers killed 98% of the species. Thanks to conservation maybe 5,500 individuals survive, but poaching, habitat loss and climate change continue the threat of extinction.
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