Its gaze settles on me,
and for a moment
we regard one another
eye to eye
over a span of forty empty feet
and seventy thousand years.
Forty empty feet . . . .
How long would it take?
Two heartbeats?
Three?
The lion—
black-maned and blood-tattooed—
rests behind the arch
of a flesh-stripped ribcage.
The giraffe’s legs and neck
stretch away, half eaten
and seeming to merge with the dry earth.
The indistinct remnants of its stomach
lie in a heap,
torn at by gibbering vultures
and marabou storks—
the grim undertakers of the wild.
How long would it take?
I know I should look away,
break this connection,
but the golden eyes have me transfixed—
exhilarated and terrified for longer
than it would take this magnificent killer
to charge our open-sided Land Cruiser
and pull me to my death.
I envision the precise explosion
of muscle and claw,
my frozen horror,
and the undeniable realization
that would come a moment too late.
Then its attention drifts away,
passes languidly over the ragged scavengers
and up to the sky
where a bird has taken flight.
The trance is broken.
I’ve scarcely breathed.
My shoulders relax with an unsteady exhalation,
and I’m thankful to be no more than
a mild curiosity—
of less interest than the vultures
and jackals that edge near,
hungry for any scrap
that this tragic animal
is willing to disregard.
Eventually, time draws us away.
Our vehicle rumbles to life.
I twist backward, staring
until only the treetop vultures are visible.
Later, I’ll parse this moment
of our extraordinary encounter
and struggle to apprehend its visceral truth
of life and death.
Kenneth D. Reimer