Valentine

A poor little baby
Thats who she was
Grazing with her mother
Why?
Just because

Creation placed them
In that park
Kruger and yes she
Was poached there
By the criminals
And slaughtered
Tragically

And they left the calf
There injured
Hacked with a panga they
Left that beautiful baby
Just to fade away

But lions found her and
Started eating her
Poor soul
Valentine they called her
She took that loving role

Lots of love forthcoming
Lots of serious care
Lots of people did their best
All of them aware

Of the great potentiality
The despondency and fear
The babies isolation
From its mother lost and gone
The untimeliness of all of this
How could it go on

With bloody conflict everywhere
With marauders on the borders
And a great fog of despair
So missing her mother
So lost to her world
The shock and awe and suffering
It had just been hurled

Into a hellish awful place
With her mother hacked to death
Her horn to go to China
Followed by her breath

She was so impressionable
She soaked up all her pain
She was who she looked up to
And all that vile disdain
The noise the dark expression
The evil that came by
That tore her heart a’sunder
And just made her cry

She was her great champion
How could she be cut down
Those ugly horrible nasty men
They really went to town
Mother cried so beseechingly
And moved they never were
And when she saw me beaten
You should have just seen her

Her eyes were red as fire itself
Her anger was immense
She loved me how she tried to save me
But it made no sense

They chopped her with their panga’s
Her blood was everywhere
Her screams they must have woken up
The dead whom she did share

Her woeful end with loudly
And I will not forget
The way she seemed to smile at me
Looking awfully wet

Her blood it just went everywhere
Splashing on me too
How could they do this to her
What was I going to do

A lost soul in a vacant place
With injuries as well
And Lions around I heard the growling
It was just like Hell

Man hell this hideous interlude
That whittled at my soul
The agony of seeing
What was that bloodied hole

And then the Lions were on me
Their saliva stank a lot
Biting at my bottom and my tail
I think they got

Open bite wounds spreading shock
How much it pained me so
And then, I was rescued
By who I did not know

I felt their warm breath on me
I tasted their salty sweat
I knew that I was badly injured
But then I did just let

Them help me they were clearly
Helping me and they
Were cleaning me and it felt good
I just floated away

Convulsing and so sickly
Totally confused
Clearly on this awful day
I had been so abused

The sequence of events
The monotony of pain
The randomness of all of this
And the dreadful strain

I still could smell my mother
I still could feel her breath
Even though she had gone away
I felt I shared her death

Which now would never leave me
I was marked in strife
Whatever happened now to me
I was not to lose my life

A pilgrimage to the rainbow bridge
Was not to be the way
That I should give up and go there
Thats what she did say

I had to battle through this
That was her desire
To keep her genes in Africa
And to always feel her fire

All manner of white coats
The different smells all came
They sent me to the hospital
And gave me my name

Valentine they called me
A little love of theres
According to a voice I heard
Someone said their prayers

How I suffered all that evening
In intensive care
All sorts of people helping me
And all of them aware

Of me and my misfortune
And my poor mother too
They all seemed so responsible
All trying to do

The best for me
I felt that
The universe was too
I felt part of creation
And hoped I could pull through

The netherworld was calling
The ephemeral cord was near
I suddenly felt breathless
Wiping away a tear

A kind of trance like numbness
Descending from the sky
Concussed somewhat and painful
It seems that I would die

A coldness and an iciness
Set in and I was sure
That perhaps mother was calling me
Knocking at my door

Then soundlessness and stillness
A silence from beyond
I remember rolling over
And feeling mothers bond

And I was on a cloud somewhere
Looking back down to
My body and the doctors
It was over I walked through

Onto the rainbow bridge
And there was mother
She was there
smiling she was smiling
In the summer air

And Lofo’s mother
Who I was glad to see
Although we have left Africa
i think we would rather be

Here

Where its safer