Encounter With Baboons Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

I came around the cluster
of rocks into the full shock
of confrontation:

the troop
leader a slight distance
from the group – six metres
between us – showing
his fangs like broken
pitchfork tines.

I saw my
shadow crouch in blurring
dust and draw the long blade
from its sheath.

All
movement froze, even birds
on thorn-tree branches;
my skull a cavern of ice.

All
sound ceased.
Then a fat blue fly buzzed
and wet jaws snapped shut
over a dog-faced bark.

Eyes looked
into me from a darkness
beyond night’s darkness.

And from deep in that darkness
his scream like sheet-metal
tearing
unfroze the world.

And then he turned his back.

And the electrified birds
fell back into the branches.

And the frozen trees
started moving in the breeze.

My shadow still crouched
beside sun-drenched rocks
and waving yellow grass.

All utterly changed.

As if I had never
before seen that place.