Dolphin Sunday

Gina Wisker

Cintsa, Sunday morning, still smarting
from a spiteful email followed by
a dream of exclusion.
Across the bay, when you scan, then home in closely,
a school of dolphins moves through the sea
dedicatedly, in formation.
Leap, fin, curve; leap, fin, curve.
Hardly disturbing the flow.
Making their way.

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Weaver

Gina Wisker

The mousebird arrives
its non aerodynamic tail ......................
trailing.
But its little peaked quiff is jaunty
in the morning sunshine.
He too sits in the banana tree, without displacing
the laughing dove carefully
building her nest in the banana leaf.
And both kinds of Mr Weaver
furnishing their bundled nests of woven materials.
Long slivers of banana leaf
turned, woven, twisted.
Fixed. Secured.
Only Mrs Weaver needed now.
Above, the lesser striped swallows with their tiny red heads
their split tails,
soar and circle
landing on the TV aerial.
Surveying the territory.

 

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Drive

Gina Wisker

When you’re driving through the Kruger
either you see nothing for 2 ½ hours, reduced
to describing grass or dung
or suddenly – on one side of the road –a rhino.
On another, a startled and insistently warning impala male, its antlers up,
three cautious giraffe grazing the treetops.
A seemingly lounging leopard, hiding its spots and stripes in the undergrowth but visible to all.
Just be aware. And keep your arms in the car.
Sometimes, suddenly, a giraffe wanders across the road.
You mistake a warthog for a rhino.
A rhino for a warthog.
Things need to be in perspective.
How can I read the constitution of the dung?
What will cross the road tomorrow?, or has it crossed
while my back was turned and I was scanning a seemingly empty acre of grassland,
looking, as usual, for signs.
I can try to read the runes in the scrub dunes the
waxing and waning of the moons the entrails of animal and enemy
In themselves. However,
are we not more than that?
Inscrutable.
Impervious to interpretations.
Latterly now, approaching perhaps
left field, subtle,
from the road side.
Is it a herd of lion slowly crossing in majesty and self confidence?
Or no more
than a shrieking water thickney trapped in the headlights?

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