Lioness

It is Sunday and we are off to the Lion park.
But first we must pass this parade of ostriches:
mother and father and a float of small babies

with fabulous plumage still in tufty stage soft
furze that will in time feather into ostentations,
ladies used to die for to decorate their hats.

This parade causes the car to slow at the crossing
sign that warns : Beware of smaller animals.
Parents taking children to bush Sunday school?

Thule gears down and we observe the birds: a lark
thrilla on a thorn bush, and to welcome me back
the blacksmith plover strikes up.

The lion enclosure gates are guarded by a young woman
you ask if she is afraid, Wonder Girl says, no, never.
Look behind her. Right there all golden and large,

nothing between us but razor wire fence and metal gate
Miss lion-heart operates, there in your line of sight,
seated sphinx-like, cross-wise the dusty trail, is a lioness.

No zoo beast this. In her element she is magnificence.
That head; even with tresses relinquished to flash locks
of man-lion, even so, that low afro head cropped close,

is its own planet. A sizable sun set on a turmeric
powdered body. We pull up alongside the fence, we read
the sign, we do all it says, this makes sense.

There have been incidents. There is tape. That woman last
year who thought she’d film a lion up close because it was
lazing all at ease and Disney, till it lifted up, and there is no

stop watch to clock the speed which cut the distance
between woman and lion. We wind the windows
all the way up, the lioness lolls in a beauty queen pose.

Done win already. Miss honey, sweet-biscuit, amber
and pollen. For her, Joburg’s mines have been stripped.
This lion queen never deigns to roar, she just shows

full set of teeth as she half rotates her massive world
head set there, a golden globe on her strong stem neck.
That is all that’s needed, that is her” don’t even test”.

We gaze at her majestic under her own sign, the sun
applying more gold streaks and highlights to her pelt.