Until you pulled
the trigger you
knew nothing

of wild boars
except tales
your father told

you as a child,
but suddenly
there it was

fierce and feral,
yellowed tusks
flying at you—

the tall novitiate.

So when you
raised the rifle
to your eye

and fired,
your mastery
of boars burst

over African
grassland,
splattered

in a grisly shower
of comprehension:

red words
splashed
on knee-high grass,

paragraphs hashed
out in final breaths,
until the depleted

subject of your study—
tumescent body
and stiff squat legs—

lay dead in African
savanna, the obsolete
entry you never read
in your Encyclopedia Britannica.