My friend sends me the video:
lions kneeling at a watering hole,
chins speckled in blood,
just trying to rinse it all down
beneath a sun that whitens
anything it can’t burn.
Then this turtle paddles up
and starts licking their beards,
their jaws, like it can’t stop
tasting another’s hunger.
For a moment, tongues wrestle.
Then, somehow, it happens:
the terrapin swims clear,
lions exit on claws like triggers,
and it costs us nothing to forget
what graffities the dry grass—
the zebra with its torn flanks,
the sentence of bleached bones.