One Poet To Another

I remember you, O Dinosaur-of-a-kind. I remember you clearly. On that fine, fine day; That day of all our days, unnumbered in the multitude of your days, and lost in the melee of mine; And through a kind of intoxicated haze, I recall that fine and pleasant afternoon. That fine and pleasant afternoon, which dragged on for a grateful me, as slowly as the tropical sun sinking into its warm bed far off over the distant kunai sea. For there I stood among the banana trees that line our darling watering hole. There I stood in the midst of a thirstily drowning throng; There I stood at a place notorious in its time, but always favoured. There I stood as you entered; Entered, With little pomp, Little pageantry; With little acknowledgement, Little recognition; Yet complete with your own dignity. You entered as quietly as a mouse would enter a house after midnight, but with less such ambition; As slowly as one of DH Lawrence’s slithering Lord of Life, but with less such venom; Entered as a dinosaur might come unbidden, enormous yet hidden, famed yet unknown, celebrated yet unrecognizable and as invisible as the poet and as tremendous; Entered that fated watering hole and into the sphere of my known universe. *On meeting Papua New Guinea's greatest living poet and writer, Russel Soaba, at the Banana Club at Waigani suburb in Port Moresby.