ancestral recall

Portrait of a Leopard from the shoulders up, in three-quarter view. She is gazing off to the right of the image. Blurred acacia trees sit against pale gold ground in the background, with tall blades of grass the same color as her coat floating in on the left.

Oh weakness! My Glory! In secret saved! And somehow this secret, this wheel, keeps on passing down to us.

Staring at a portrait, contemplating a recent passing, repeating a song — imagining taking a bundle of painful ancestral inheritances before an enormous psychopomp creature, impossibly beautiful and covered in spots of roses, to guide across the river.

the same leopard looks straight at the camera, her right ear twitched backwards to listen to something behind her. her eyes are seaglass green.

Mother Leopard, photographed in Maasai Mara National Reserve, November 3, 2022.