It was here the old man drank and wiped his mouth,
cupped the cool water and bathed his face with a deep
exhale – his smooth balding scalp shining beneath
the sun like polished soapstone. The day had been long,
the search forlorn, whistling and clicking his tongue,
a small sack of boiled sweet potatoes slung back over

his shoulder, bamboo cane sifting through lovegrass.
He’d walked with the rising sun – whistling, clicking,
his gait limp and slow, the blond expanse glistening
off boots rugged with repair. But where was the calf
he sought? The calf’s mother suckling on her own teat
back in the maternity pen, egrets white on the fence.

To be born in 1931 means nothing here – joints ache
with each tired step, only the sky and rural landscape
soothe the memory’s walk deep with the quiet intake
of death. The wind sings through the grass, parrots rise
from bare trees, yet youth still whispers some reprise
his hunched shadow won’t easily surrender or forget.

He knows the calf lies somewhere low and searches
for shallow disturbances, a thermal of jackal buzzards
soars west off the reclining sun, shattered skull-gourds
of wild oranges littering the bush. He walks to where
the windmill turns its sweet exercise, the steady gleam
of silver blades levelling the trough to a simple mirror;

and here the old man stops and drinks, the full moon
rising where the sun rose, the sun steadily sinking into
the horizon. And for a while he stands still, the June
air quickly turning cold, the broken look of a stranger,
toothless and bald, staring back off wrinkled water
his hands left to settle, the sky nailed wet with stars.