Under a Mopane Tree in the Heat of the Day

A lioness stretches out long, eyes closed, still 

but for the in and out of breathing.  Four flawless

cubs sprawl over her belly, press into her breasts. 

They nurse and knead with baby paws.  She turns 

her body, raises one tawny leg, and the cubs 

topple, mew like miniature bells, scramble, 

search, reconnect – joined-again magnets.  

 

We sit silent on the savanna.  Our unmoving 

roofless vehicle six yards from this august 

animal, predatory carnivore, mother of 

nurslings.   In this moment I sense the kinship – 

a summoned tingle deep in my breast, soft buzz 

echo in the belly that announced the flow of milk.  

She knows that too – nuzzling mouths latched on, 

sucking with fury, and that fleeting serenity, 

mine too.  Her ears are never stopped. 

She hears stalks of grass, their snapping. 

© Martha E. Snell, 2021 

Lioness with cubs, Ngorongoro Crater, The Serengeti
Photo by Tony Young
from Wikimedia Commons

On the Move

Bursts of hail and heavy downpours,

resolute, gray, and dismal rain.

Shaggy pine trees overshadow guard rails.

I stumble on the road to nowhere

jammed with angry, hungry folks

seeking shelter from sheer boredom,

humming uplifting folk songs,

shoplifting a bit of happiness 

from the shelves of the rural stores.

Silver lettering reads LOVE

on the roof of a tumbledown house.

My world trembles around me,

I page through the fluffy ball of memories,

I invested too much in the writing to stop now.

Lonely and forsaken, 

I move from the floor to the sofa

swallowing salted sorrow,

typing the phone number,

a collection of digits.

It’s assigned a new area code since I lived there,

but those seven numbers, 

they are still the same,

exactly the same.

Such pain every time

to touch the buttons, 

listen to a pregnant pause,

hit the nail in the coffin of love,

destroying the sandcastle 

populated with crocodiles and cactuses

with the authority of a weathered writer.

Hitting the nail on my head,

deleting the dead seven numbers.

© Helen Kanevsky, 2018

AT&T Push-button telephone
from Wikipedia