Lord of Life

                        (For Harry Owen)

There was an old White rhino bull

who'd lived for years in a huge boma

where I'd go

to sit and write

– back to a fence-post;

and one day

I felt this vast breath on my neck

and a head like a wheelbarrow

ducked between the old elevator cables of the fence,

nudged my shoulder.

So I sat

– scared to break the spell –

while he rested his horn-crowned head

beside me,

fine, furrowed, crepe-like skin

laid

companionably

against my bare arm.

I held my breath,

but he felt – as they do at peace –

so like a great horse

I ventured a hand up

to touch his restful ears,

tickled them gently

so he canted towards me

and closed his eyes

in bliss.

It became a ritual,

whenever I was around in the Reserve

we'd visit,

he'd come when I'd settled to my notebook

and we'd share our warm blood

in simple liking to be together, I guess:

I read him more than one

fledging  poem

– and his quiet gravity saved me, I'm sure

many a vanity or vagueness of phrase,

he silently mentored me

for more than a year

with his antiquity of idiom

and gigantic,

seasoned gentleness.

I moved on, he must be dead now;

but his calm, alert being at my elbow

often has haunted me,

stood pondering at my shoulder as I've written

(like Chaucer or Shakespeare or Yeats

will do)

– shaming all silliness out of me.

I am most lucky:

I could take my chance

with one

of the lords

of life.   

 -  Norman Morrissey