Richard Leakey Had a Moment

There in strata, Richard Basin born and drove a lion
Through the Serengeti boys, an incidental imitation
Of that marriage or that battle where
The Secretary’s rose caught fire, a happy farmer
Whose cemetery trapped a skeleton he loved

Skillful rover, blind mechanic, whose associations
Had their ponies stabled in a white museum
He’d observed, you see, the Chairman
Incapacitated, whispering Etheopic secrets
In administrative ecstasies.

Hominid of findings, born of helicopters and surprises
Richard had a harder wish and killed a poacher at
The behest of the sun
The body wasn’t buried. It stood up in later pages
Erect, black, holding ivory trinkets and spoke:
“Richard, your ghost will go to the sky’

He walked a railway made of percolated syllogisms
Discovered near a family grave, where jaws and
Illustrations walked at night, in silent circles
Holding their candle, a direct sonambulist
Brokering ancient starlight, alive again, in
Wilder spectacle and sandy terrobalia