Nic Sebastian
	thorn    acacia tortilis we are trekking north from Mweya to Kikorongo across open savannah through lion country  the Ruwenzoris rise high blue  before us and parched wind sways the grasses of the plain an old man sits under a thorn tree  sewing a rope of buffalo hide  with an acacia thorn his rope stretches out miles  from him over the savannah  into the western horizon suddenly crashing wing-roar  and a swarm of glittering bees  led by their queen  meet your new home, my bees! the bees blanket the thorn tree  and the old man warmly then a maned lion charges  on rippled muscle and with great bee-roar voice  he pounces on the old man  but the bees are swift and they enfold  the lion who falls to earth from muscled midair as tinkling white bone while the old man yanks hard on his rope of buffalo hide  and our feet through the earth feel the peak Margherita miles away in the high blue distance ripped groaning from all her height oh the sorrow of it and oh the pain of waking baobab     adansonia digitata inside the baobab lives a dark slender girl  dressed in drifting moon-cloth who carries a luminous bone dagger  upon which she has carved  many names exquisitely  at her belt a bag of duiker skin  swells with the pulsing  prayers she has stolen  and kept singing high  she rides as she pleases upon the great winds and through the light  she haunts the canopy   of the baobab tree and at night she bends  over your fevered  sleep and whispers: ausculta, fili! I am  that to which nothing  may be preferred her eyes are dark gold  as wild bee honey  and when she moves little blood-beads fall in scalding rows  from her prayer bag and settle steaming  on the path behind her