I’d hardly been in the Kalahari Desert for forty-eight hours. My desert boots hadn’t, how could I put it, well they hadn’t quite started to feel the second skin they would eventually become. My bags, still unpacked, hadn’t started to collect the sands of Kuruman.
Sand, that even today, many months after my safe return to the comforts and vibrant jolt of London, I keep finding here and there, like in tiny little whispers.
It was then that the news reached us.
I had been looking forward to meeting her. Flower the meerkat. The star of the small screen. We’d just returned to base camp from a long day, one of the very many that were to come. We had been scouting locations to use in the film that we were about to start shooting for Animal Planet and Discovery Films. A film about a family of meerkats. The news came as a sudden blow. Flower the meerkat had just died. Bitten by a Cape cobra.
I remember that night’s sky so very vividly. Pink. Translucent and thundery around the edges. Typical Kalahari.
I don’t know what prompted me to write this poem. I had never written a poem about a queen, let alone a queen of meerkats. But I just had to. And I did…
“Queen of the Kalahari”
*********
Tiny little creature
We stand by you
Whilst
The overcast skies
Still weep.
Queen of the Kalahari,
Feisty Warrior Queen,
Let your spirit wander,
Deep,
In the valley of the Queen.
Along your regal path,
You’ve dealt
With
One and a thousand feats.
Always a survivor,
Never, never weak.
Queen of the Kalahari,
Feisty desert Queen,
Let your spirit wander,
Deep,
In the valley of the Queen.
Text & photos - © Jesús Montero
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