AT ROCKTON SAFARI #1

Stretched in shade on stubble grass and clay

Striped fur undulates

upon a belly’s breathing

Staring eyes unseeing, glimpse

Savannah bush and grasses

And throb a fleeting pain

too swift for memory’s grasp.

Now, all the cubs of generations stretched ahead

Whose dinners come from abattoirs

Whose muscles lie neglected,

Will yawn their monstrous teeth

And twitch their brains

In archetypal flashes

Aug. 77
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AT ROCKTON SAFARI #2

Enormous head,

Ponderous brow

Thick neck, brutal chest

And shoulders

Winter hide and curly hair.

The open sky’s a thousand miles away.

No dust is stirred in fury

No challenging shake of head

No herds through wiry grass and hummock

Run their pounding purpose.

The sun in quiet glory sets

Alone

Across the empty stretches of Saskatchewan.

Aug 77
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AT ROCKTON SAFARI #3

Lines of graceful hips

And thighs

Shanks of straight kneed gentle movement

Sway like reeds of grass

Stirred of winnowing

Innocence;

Of wide dark eyes and lashes

Fawn and rust and sable

Coat of patches stretching

Upward on a stately neck

And crowned by helpless horns.

Naiveté

From sweeping equatorial steppes

Bent low

To grasp with flaccid lips . . . . . ..

Candied popcorn

Out of overheated cars.

Aug. 77
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LAST DAYS OF A BABY SNATCHER

     Twenty years

         That may attack some restless dream

     Or lie in ambush

          waiting on a wayward thought

                           Go sliding down into a pool of yesterdays;

                        Years of walking

          at the side of sadness, of anger and despair

     Through heavy doors

               that hold a courtroom’s quiet;

        Where tension sits upon a judge’s glance

    As children file in and file out;

                A parent’s desperate history

      Laid before the bench

                        In helplessness

   Then tidied up into the judge’s order;

While frantic minds of children

              Play their noise outside the doors.

Sept. 74
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THE RECKONING

Yes,

We’ve met before.

There at a thousand doors

You let me in with helplessness.

Tell me

Did you get my message

Or did my words stand in the way ?

Did you see me

Or was I hidden in a role ?

Did you discover hope

Or only confirmation that the world

Ignored you ?

Sept. 74
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