Today, all that shelters me descends
with the sudden, clamorous weight
of a collapsed safari tent. Tangled

in its heavy canvas, its guy wires and
flapping doorway, I struggle
to my knees, scrape the palm of my hand

against flinty ground, stagger upright
in the ruins of shelter gone rogue,
its domed roof and foldaway

walls revealed for what they are:
a flimsy intervention.

Until the bird in me, that
leather-winged pterodactyl,
resumes its interrupted flight

choosing the accommodation of wings
to uplifting air, leaving the mortal need
for pretexts of home far, far behind.