When I was a little boy
A toddler of preschool age
I would summer at my grandparents farm
In Rhodesia
The summers were hot
But I didn’t know
I was a toddler of preschool age
The plantation was vast
My grandparents kind
The workers nice
Grandma was sweet
She drove a jeep
She scoured the veld for wounded game
She’d patch them up
All the while tsk’ing and tutting
Tutting and tsk’ing
Her curly silver hair would bob
And bounce
The last day after the hunters left
She brought home a zebra colt
Wounded and mad
My grandmother’s tears made the dusty soil dance
I didn’t like the zebras
It was their fault I couldn’t have a dog
A pet dog
Sure there were work dogs on the plantation
But they were trained not to scare the game
Until ordered to
“We can’t have you a dog little Willy.
He’d scare the profits away.
And I don’t have the time to train you a cur
I need more trained ones myself.”
“Ah ha! I know! You can have the colt as your pet.
How grand!
You’ll be the only boy on Long Island
With a pet zebra!
What should we name him little Willy?”
“Spot,” I meekly uttered
A round of laughter filled the room.
My grandfather’s face red
Grandma shaking her head
Bobbing her silver curls
The help laughed nervously
They regarded me somehow
But I didn’t know how
I was a toddler of preschool age
I know now the irony
Of naming a zebra “Spot”
But I wasn’t being ironic
I was a toddler of preschool age
And I wanted a dog
At the end of the season
My suitcases packed
I’d take my last walk with my pet zebra
I often thought he regarded me
As if I were a zebra
Or as if he were a human
I do not know
I was a toddler of preschool age
As we drove in my grandma’s jeep to the airport
Careful not to provoke the rebels
I remember the tears on my face
As wet as the ones that fall now
But, oh, so much more hot
Now I wonder so terribly
Was it from the Rhodesian heat?
Or just me regarding “Spot”?
What, just what, caused my rage?
But then I didn’t know
I was a toddler of preschool age.
(c) Bill Corrigan 2010