Completely protected on all sides by volcanoes
A woman, darkhaired, in stained jeans
Sleeps in central Africa.
In her dreams, her notebooks, still
Private as maiden diaries,
The mountain gorillas move through their life term;
Their gentleness survives
Observation. Six bands of them
Inhabit, with her, the wooded highland.
When I lay me down to sleep
Unsheltered by an natural guardians
From the panicky life-cycle of my tribe
I wake in the old cellblock
Observing the daily executions,
Rehearsing the laws
I cannot subscribe to,
Envying the pale gorilla-scented dawn
She wakes into, the stream where she washes her hair,
The camera-flash of her quiet
Eye.