Darkest Africa: A Poem

by Beverly Jonnes

The underside of Nels’s unbridled passion
was impatience,
and when no response
made a dent in his excitement–
not facts, not anger–
we settled on humor. So in his memory,
we tell Nels Stories and thereby
help him stay remembered.

It was 1952 in Ethiopia,
and wild dogs were our newest problem
on the Menelik II School compound,
so Wally and Nels
were asked to kill these frighteners of children,
these troublemakers,
these garbage hounds,
these sometimes rabid invaders.

And now, I tell of a pre-dawn
in our Addis kitchen when incorrigible Spot–
our neighbor Ann’s dalmation,
who’d learned bad ways from the pack–
rattled our outside trashcan cover,
and Nels, remembering
Ann’s request that Spot be put down in secret,
seized the moment:

grabbed his rifle, aimed from the kitchen,
and for the first time
missed the exact mark. Spot, suddenly
a yelping menace, awakened Ann,
and she–bare bosom bursting
from her open window–shouted, “Spot, Spot!”
while Nels shot again, now successfully,
and, impatient, threw his arm forward

to point at Spot and scream
at our cook Makonnen–just then
coming to work–“Makonnen,
BURY THE DOG!” In quick succession:
rifle popping, Spot yelping,
Ann flopping, rifle re-popping, Nels pointing,
his elbow hitting me in the temple,
my falling to the floor knocked out.

When I came to, I heard Margaret–
a neighbor approaching to borrow sugar,
mutter, “And all this
before dawn in Darkest Africa.”