In 2007, my wife took a volunteer position with a charity in Kampala in Uganda. When the post finished, I joined her for a fortnight. We hired a driver and went around the country, seeing some impressive landscapes and wildlife. We saw tree-climbing lions, a huge spider in our bedroom (which next day our driver told us we should not have left alone – ‘very dangerous’), a cobra, crocodiles, chimpanzees, elephants, gorillas and hippos. I drew on much of this experience for The Dreamer Falls, and wrote some short poems along the way. Here are the poems, with photos that inspired them.

Elephant

Skin blackened and slackened by age
tusks long gone
he is outcast on a lonely spit
surrounded by white grebe –
and deathly marabou stork

Nile Crocodile

Time
and lazy river heat
lift our traps as we dream
in the certainty of a shape
that lasts forever

Rothschild Giraffe

Orange and brown
untested like young aristos
we rub our [slightly-shorter] necks
on acacia bark and
against each others –

Ugandan Cob

The golden year-ringed horn I’ve lost
proves that
though we’re slight
we too can fight –
amongst ourselves

Hippo

We watch
from the top of the river
eyes deep, in ridges of pink –
just beware
there is a mountain under here

Zebra

Swishing its tail
to keep the flies off its rump
the eyes saying
please don’t fill me up again
with terror

One I didn’t get a photo for, it was too fast:

Cobra

Sometimes you will see one
crossing the track
and see one we did
a black line drawn by God
and a hunger for rats

And finally, one about the beautiful national bird of Uganda:

Great Crested Crane

Red, yellow, black
I am the Ugandan colour bird
and I call out for life
in the golden straw
of her savannah

Ugandan Bestiary features in my poetry collection, Up in the Air, available here: