A Crocodile Can’t Be Loved

When I met him, he had a soft-bellied,

serpentine charm, sharp smiled 

the white of lilies, he wore a hat of twigs -

a gift for any absent-minded wader's nest 

and he greeted the visits of thirsty bee-eaters

with a tell-tale savage kiss.

I should have seen how low he laid

in the river, his cold intimacy 

with the mud, primordial as the ooze and

scaled and armoured to strike, 

an existence of all jaw,

and all bite.

And a crocodile belongs to no one

element, fragmented between earth and water,

from lethargy to the snap of the chaos 

of violence. Only the darkness 

is a crocodile's friend, when moons of eyes 

shine in the blackness of a fluid sky.

At night, 

he is a horse for gods, 

he weighs souls, and

arrogant; once a plover 

has submitted, he sleeps

with his mouth open wide 

for me to gingerly pick his teeth. 
 

I should have known 

when I saw him grip a wildebeest 

by a hoof - the fragility of the undefended,

dragged to the silence of still water 

of a laboured struggle ended - instead,

I said, look how here death

keeps its uneasy peace with life. 
 
 

Image is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:36,_Crocodile,_Charles_Catton%27s_Animals_(1788)_(cropped).jpg

On Twitter: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nymphaea_nouchali5.JPG#mw-jump-to-license

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egyptian_plover.jpg

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PloverCrocodileSymbiosis.jpg

Also this very funny image of a crocodile from a bestiary: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crocodile_-_British_Library_Royal_12_F_xiii_f24r_(detail).jpg