The Week We Spent

We spent a week

one four hour afternoon

watching a leopard

under a tree,

perusing impalas,

entering stage right.

A few drift by him.

Safely? Nervously!

A male impala, horns curved

sands his ground a mere

20 feet away – facing off.

The “Lamb stands with the Lion”.

Enter two elephants and

three giraffes, stage left.

They smell invisible danger.

The wallow pit is dry anyway.

They turn back

never facing the leopard.

Wart hogs enter stage right.

The leopard finally darts out

as we watch giraffes.

He misses and lies in the wallow

atonishingly blending into the greys.

The leopard returns to his stump

lounging as if in a bathtub,

legs draped like vines over the edges,

silently announcing danger

to the foliage eaters one and all.

And the food chain, familiar to us all

at many levels, goes on.

Lizette Estelle Stiehr

9/5/10

Dedicated to Chris Vaisvil and his comment

“the week we spent that afternoon”.

The first of my own Africa pictures here!