A Hunting Expedition Poem by Gert Strydom

Far off in the bush veldt near to Marken,
where the red sand lies like sea sand,
a young hunter on a day
takes a old.303 rifle with open sights

and walks following a tracker,
that they call a guide,
past green thorn trees
with long white camel-thorns

to where a impala
is standing against a hillock
and he aims for a headshot
and I say to him: “shoot for the shoulder-blade”

but he doesn’t listen
and when the shot resounds
the antelope lowers its head
and the bullet whistles away from a rock plate

with the antelope
running away in a red brown stripe
disappearing into the bushes
and the bush veldt sun
burns without mercy down on us.