Jane : A Shining Encounter : 1942
The forenoon was warm and the leaves around his new enclosure
nodded like tired dancers in the lazy September breeze.
Lying in the sweet scented grass, his eyes closed
against the cloudless sky, Ming remembered
the Jiajin Mountains of Sichuan, the place where he was born,
and the wide groves of tall bamboos
where he and his brothers had played and run free.
He remembered the cruel ungentle men who had seized him,
torn him awayfrom the den in the trees, the bamboos
and the wide flowing Chuan Jiang river.
Into a box he was pushed and onto a ship he was loaded,
across a vast ocean and to a great grey chill city he was taken,
imprisoned in a cage with bamboo a plenty,
but no brothers to play with, no mountain slopes to roam.
He sighed and slept until a persistant noise intruded on his sunlit dreams.
Blinking sleep heavy eyes, he saw a small creature wriggling
through a gap in the heavy wire fence, contorting its young body
around the jagged edges like a Chinese Cobra
emerging from its rocky lair in the foothills of Sichuan.
The panda stiffened, nervous of this invasion into his solitary world,
but the elfin child, with hair white as cotton in a field, smiled.
Like a magnet in a jar of pins, the hole in the fence had enticed Jane
from the safety of the rug on the grass into a magical land of dreams
where, as moonlight pierced the shadows of the night,
the nursery toys danced and sang beneath the glistening stars.
Her eyes fixed on the huge toy now come alive in the sunshine morning,
she clasped a large rock bun made moist with apple and honey,
trotted through the long grass and held out a petite hand.
In that moment of offering quiet and unfearful, she watched bewitched
as the great black furry paw moved slowly down to her small palm,
and gently, oh so gently, from her he took the sticky offering.
Then “Time to go now, sweetheart”, her father’s voice,
benign and clear as as a moorland beck in an empty evening,
summoned her quietly back to the rug on the grass
and the scruffy old toy with black patched eyes.
Wearing a cloak of angelic innocence, face bright with undiluted joy,
her heart consigned the shining encounter to memory,
which even her mother’s trembling anger could not destroy.
For thus would her perfect trust have been shattered,
and lost for ever the remembrance abiding in that moment
when the spinning globe hesitated on its axis,
earth and heaven combined, and the world stood still.
as the great black furry paw moved slowly down to her small palm,
and gently, oh so gently, from her he took the sticky offering.
Then “Time to go now, sweetheart”, her father’s voice,
benign and clear as as a moorland beck in an empty evening,
summoned her quietly back to the rug on the grass
and the scruffy old toy with black patched eyes.
Wearing a cloak of angelic innocence, face bright with undiluted joy,
her heart consigned the shining encounter to memory,
which even her mother’s trembling anger could not destroy.
For thus would her perfect trust have been shattered,
and lost for ever the remembrance abiding in that moment
when the spinning globe hesitated on its axis,
earth and heaven combined, and the world stood still.
Naomi
