we meet up again
at desert rhino camp
in the Palmweg Concession
 
at communal dinner 
it turns out Sasha drinks 
red wine even vodka 
it’s just champagne 
bungs up his tummy
he confides i discover
warm and funny
it’s his stutter keeps him silent 
not he’s sullen
and yes, he still foregoes 
the pureed lentil soup
but only because
if he eats it he must see it
he explains meat 
should be meat 
see, what i’d pegged as pique
was simply sensitive
 
and as the evening went from pork to apple crumble
eating pie and humble
i had to unsnap those early judgments
i’m much too fond of making
for neither he nor Yanick
were Gasprom or ex-OSS 
or anything remotely sinister
instead, they bake 
Russian and Ukrainian
ceramic tiles for sale
in europe’s many markets
(in which trade there plainly is money
enough to marry models)
saving one last shallow surmise
of mine still standing
 
 
 
 

Sasha won’t drink champagne at breakfast after the balloon ride.
He just won’t.
From Kiev to the Namib, he prefers neither heat nor ice.
He just doesn’t.
But air-conditioned malls and the night F1 in Singapore
Light his eyes
They do. 
And Elizabeth, blonde-haired teen bride on his shoulder.
She does.
 
On the blimp 
We’re east of english 
closing on orthodox
The Frankfurt fraus on Maine
descend from Greeks 
And the Swiss Germanically vie 
their scars from knee surgery
Our pilot once was French 
which Maria also speaks
who’s with monied Moscow Yanick and
who teases Sasha 
because there’s so much still in this wide world to see
and absolutely nothing 
about our glide in the heavens to be grumpy 
 
 
 

 At 5.58
we were third 
at the gate
to Sossuvlei
(that ivoried clay pan
with its sentry
titan dunes)

we’d outpaced the gloaming
third would hardly do
so we sped for first
overtook Messrs
Sunway Safaris
the first first bus
caught up with
the South African passat
which, tailgated, would yet not let

don’t blame the city slicks
these dunes too are whet
to slicing blades
whipped up to peaks
by grinding competition
between two winds
between the desert and
the deep blue sea