If we had been shoebills
neither of us would have survived:
a second son and second daughter
from whom, after the dream days
of pragmatic action,
insurance against the first’s demise,
our folks would have stridden, spurning
the hapless bodies,
carrying the fish and water
to the one who had cast us out
of the nest. No matter
that our folks lived right beside a river
or that the elder child confessed,
quite flagrant, to the filial atrocities
it dished out when they turned their backs.
But we should have been harder, louder!
There’s the first child stuffing its face
on fish, the second scorned
for a puling baby,
left among the rushes to die.
The mother flicks an opalescent eye.