I spent the day in conversation with
the ungulates. Just after dawn, the gibbons
howling from their island trees inside
the moat across the road, I could see
the giraffes’ gentle faces at the
fence, and made my way up to their yard
to take their list. Please rake the veldt, the oldest of
the females said—bending her neck and leaning for
the carrot in my hand—we had a busy yesterday, so
things need straightening. I nodded in assent and touched
her dark, wet nose, and looked into her eyes, the color
and size of summer plums, glowing in the morning light, and
she looked into mine in wonder, before ambling off to bring the others
to the gate to supervise my gathering of tools and my work and
my singing. From time to time I could hear them pacing,
their black hooves settling softly in the dust, and they would line-up
at the rail, inclining their great heads as if straining to hear
a melody remembered, and one might join me for a moment
with a muffled trumpeting, a note or two, not a holler or a roar, but
a hopeful throaty sound persisting from a past that left sound there
in favor of sight and scenting and motion quick as lightning for escape,
and slow and elegant for wandering, too. And after I was finished
we traded places, the nine of them parading past me at the gate—
some looking down and whispering their approval—in search of
browse and solitude a little while before onlookers would arrive.
As it turned out, we stayed alone throughout the day—the rains came,
just like real savanna rains, sweeping across the sky that alternated
blue and charged with towering thunderheads—and time stretched into
ruminations. Into their barns and out, they took turns at testing
weather and resolve. And I went about my work as best I could,
urging them to gather and to shift so I could move around them,
spread fresh bedding hay and hang some branches rich with foliage for
feed and entertainment, check their troughs for water and
the mix of sweet grains they like for lunch. They stood around their
porches, or ducked inside for cover, and seemed to quite enjoy
the afternoon. When we spoke they mostly questioned, or
asserted with their gorgeous eyes what they could not otherwise
express. You see, their lungs and throats and tongues are not made
for human speech—not English or Swahili, Portuguese or Arabic
or Hebrew; not even hoots or grunts of proto-hominid domain. So it is
their eyes, always their eyes, or muscles, bones and skin, tail and ears
in silent motion—which, in truth, did well for all of us,
listening long toward evening, each for
what the others had to say.
—
William Lewis Winston lives in Oakland, California, where he taught English and history for four decades. His poems appear in Bearing Witness, Margie, Ink Pot, Comstock Review, Poet Lore, Essential, Close Up, Vita Brevis, Sunspot Lit, and Consequence, and he received an International Merit Award from Atlanta Review. His short story “The Sound of Snow Not Falling” was featured in Philadelphia InterAct Theatre’s 2005-06 Writing Aloud series (Adrift), then published in Litro in 2023.
