Cadmium orange and ivory the Kalahari, furred with grasses and stunted trees, and then the viridian myriad-rivering pale-gold-crystalline lagoon-glittered yellow-grass-floodplain-drenching lily-eyed Okavango Delta,delicate as a bee-eater poised on a branch,and the rainstorm-scenting elephant herds stride in,cutting intricate trails through the tawny grasses, carrying the winter deluge on their trunks..their hearts are little raindrops bulging towards the earth and their ears whud thunder across the wetlands, they plunge with glee in the blissful pools,frolicking and tumbling,thwacking their trunks in delight...
Oh carmine and crimson sunsets!The air is thick with stabbing,swallowing,flapping,screeching,cackling birds!Herds of impala race through the water,silhouetted in explosions of spray...Buffalo by the thousand,gently bellowing,steaming the misty morning air with their breath,steadily advance across the shallows,curved horns one endless joyous rhythm...
Green specks of phytoplankton in bloom drift through sunbeams in the Alaskan waters...the planet rolls on its axis,the sun stands proud and millions of herrings emerge from deep water, heading for the shallows to spawn,pulsing in waves along the shoreline and all is a white soup of milt...flocks of common murres lance down through green water in pursuit of prey,trailing comet-flares of bubbles...
Steller sea lions spin through green gloom,almost colliding but twisting away at the last instant..one bull sea lion floats broken and doome don the surface,as a pod of orcas keeps charging in and ramming his body with brutal tail whacks,making pass after pass, remorselessly methodically killing him, then pulling him underwater in pairs to tear his flesh with ther teeth..
In the still morning air come the exhalations of humpback whales,white plumes smoking in the blue air,rasping and foghorning..
Across the green Serengeti the myriads of white-bearded wildebeest migrate,one endless wave for a moment,then dispersing again in exquisite patterns...a lioness sits Buddha-like surveying the distance with serene golden eyes..tall dust devils twist high into the air and undulate across the horizon...a female wildebeest on the move ,looking out for cheetahs and hyenas,walks away from the herd,lies down on her side and heaves her baby out of her body,her head turned to watch the calf emerge...
Arctic summer: the ice is splitting and turquoise pools riddle the expanses in the heat shimmer...narwhals surface and joust with their tusks in an icehole...snowgeese flock in the sky...enormous swarms of sea snails and jellyfish ride the North Atlantic Drift...blood is scarlet on the ice as a polar bear rips skin and blubber from a slaughtered seal..wobbling in masses, walruses clash and quarrel,honking,spitting and stabbing at each other with their tusks,then flop back into stupor,farting and dribbling through the warm afternoons...
Up the cold clear rivers of British Columbia the salmon are returning,hard against the currents to shed their lives,-chum,coho,pink,sockeye and chinook...grizzly bears stand on top of the river falls,catching leaping salmon in their open mouths ...The wolf-eyed trees watch every motion,every heartbeat in their green sky, and thunderstorms drip under the Spirit Bear’s claws...
In the winter waters off South Africa, in the clash of the Agulhas and Benguela Currents, billions of pilchards gather in mammoth shoals, while the great ocean’s predators converge to feast, the sharks,dolphins,fur seals and Bryde’s whales , and gannets in myriads bomb into the waves, slicing down through the foam..waltzing dolphin pods patiently herd the massive globes of pilchards to the surface, and the mayhem begins...
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