THE BRIDGE AT TSAVO, 1898
“Descent approaching now,” the guide had said perched familiar to the hunching train. Steam obscured valley and track, dead
tangles glimpsed forming patterns like pain housed in the far-off smoke where toil channels extension of an awakened skein
to bridge two worlds. Hours it has taken to join the work camp, passing walls of thorn in which the animals blink and turn, avoid
confronting the mystery (as though war were not raised amongst them) harboring vague monitions surpassant the hunt only in horror:
no such contest convenes for sente