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
