Before

BeforeSabi Sands, South Africa The Sabi Sands in the green season has a particular quality of light; dappled and shifting through the canopy, the kind that makes leopards disappear and reappear at will. Their mother had already crossed the road. These two were in no hurry. Leopard siblings stay close in the months before dispersal, and there is a particular behavior that marks these late weeks together: a pressing of bodies, a rubbing of faces, a physical

Then it didn't

Grooming in baboon society is not incidental

moving through the air in layers of amber and ash before the world fully commits to morning

and entirely unimpressed

He wore his years plainly

an impala lifted into the air

and returned to the one thing worth watching

I knew it the moment I pressed the shutter

What came next was the oldest sleight of hand in the bush

and it is coming

a single line of trees dissolving into grey

asking nothing in return