If I had to add one creature
To our plateau’s sere ecosphere
It would be the rhinoceros.
She would fit in: we’ve lots of grass
And greenery to eat, spaces
Wide and undisturbed of failed
And fallow farmland, hillsides
Favoured by goat and gai and, after dark
The deer come forth, they say.
A peaceful place, no hunters here,
No poachers of rhinoceros horn
And our mountains would protect her
Some say the rhino is the
Inspiration for the unicorn
The small and delicate white myth
Seems far away from the silent
Danger of the ponderous grey reality
But it is human failing
To see beauty in trite narrow term s
Our windy rain-parched time-eroded
Mountains though not in picture books
Are beautiful to those with eyes to see
And so is the rhinoceros.
She would fit in.
Patrick Redican 