It was a long time ago on a farm. 

The cows horse pigs chickens. 

The pond cellar farmhouse barn sheds hay-wagon fenced-fields a definition of function. 

On the table a fork butter-knife coal-bucket by the stove pump- handle. 

The dirt road is the oldest part of memory.

Wild animals roamed at night. 

Hyena aardvark wart-hog jackal bat-eared fox meerkat leopard lion buffalo hippopotamus with its mouth-hinge open. 

To eat and be eaten. 

The sky in dry season pale as a biscuit. 

Elephants threw dust over their backs. 

Geography was farther then.

Chores there were to do. 

Then storms everywhere. 

Stitches of lightning sewed the world. 

The farm and wild animals mixed in a box. 

I played with my brother’s animals he wanted the soldiers. 

I gathered zebras in the cow pasture they needed the salt-lick. 

The red-beak quelea birds in packs cleared the fields to dirt. 

The warrior-painted lilac-chested roller birds the bee-eaters the long-leg running secretary bird after a rabbit in my grandfather’s field the kingfisher stalked chased caught torn-apart.  What matter the ducks?— the cranes the long-neck pink-bill flamingos with knob-knees the vulture ostrich black-egret eating minnows insects the glossy-ibis starlings pecked in the dirt the Plymouth-Rock Wyandotte Rhode-Island-Red the white Delaware bantam the brown sparrows in the barn. 

The cows eyed the horse.

The termite mounds the farm implements.

The Botswana sausage tree with its heavy red flowers the American elm. 

A migrating herd of elephants marked the steady farm-pond with the rise and fall of the Okavango in the Kalahari Desert there in the evening sky the salt-flat of the moon.

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