When meteorite crashed inside
the Central Kalahari Game Reserve
they named it Motopi Pan
after a local watering hole.
I imagined hyenas sniggering over pints
and cheetahs crowded together int a corner booth
inevitably arguing —for obvious reasons—
over a game of cards.
The leopards must’ve split when an explosion of
light and sound hit the horizon, then later
found the crater ringed with clumps of earth
and rocks strewn across the Savana.
Concluding it was only dirt, they lost interest
wandered back to their still-warm barstools
clutching handbags fashioned
to mimic their very own print.
What they locals didn’t know was
this hurtling hunk was (literally) older
than the dirt covering the Earth,
Older even than the planet itself.
Twenty two billion years since it broke from
Vesta, our second largest asteroid and
arguably a protoplanet
(Proto— meaning here before all others).
The time traveller burrowed into layers
to join fossilized fronds,
bugs immortalized in amber
and bones of creatures greater than any present living thing.
Within the cradle of civilization
relics gently rock
alongside the newly arrived
the story of our solar system etched into its Zircon arms.