Out of the Eggs of Ants
An African Sketchbook and Other Poems
by
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About the Book
In the twilight and the twittering dawn
My life goes flitting like a spotted fawn.
A scent of something stalks the tall, dry grass—
The fragrance of the rain—I come; I pass.
Acacia thorn and zigzag lightning rend
And scratch their whistling way into the wind.
Ant-castles silhouette the fire-swept plains
Where tawny kings in limbo shake their manes.
The clouds collapse; musk mixes with the breeze.
Birds dart into the hard-knot of the trees.
A vulture’s wing is passed across the sun.
Blood stirs to surly muscle on the run.
The lion scans the landscape as it lies,
His dignity indifferent to the flies.
About the Author
EDWARD FISHER taught high school English as a Peace Corp volunteer in the remote Karamoja region of Uganda, East Africa, where he shepherded students through Shakespeare and their first school newspaper. In his spare time, he assisted anthropologists with data-gathering, and accompanied a research team from Cambridge conducting wildlife studies. He also traveled extensively—hitch-hiking through the Ituri rainforest, steam-boating down the Congo river to its mouth; touring Ptolemy’s fabled Mountains of the Moon; camping out near the border of south Sudan; stranded penniless in Nairobi; bartering in the marketplace in Swahili; stumbling onto a jungle enclave of undercover Cold War spies; and waking up to gunfire on the morning Idi Amin staged his bloody military coup. As a youth, growing up in a military family stationed far and wide, he developed an early and enduring interest in the poetry and cultural mythology of the people of the world.