B. virginianus

A tigers-eye peeks at me from stainless

Steely glare denying death

Auburn-tinged sunlight-singed

Pelage-plumage

And beneath, clenched iron feet

The sunset-capturer, enrobed in dusk’s light and shadow

And dry grasses surge at its coming

Tensed sinew beneath its deceptive buffy frame

A gape wide enough it nightly swallows the Moon

The tiger roars

At the moon

At its own frame

At the dry grasses

At the shrouding dusk

At the table where gravity has captured it forever

At the fluorescence that makes naked its mystery

For an eternally-long moment one would lapse into seeing, there in that alien space, that night falls on us all and that surging grasses contain pulsing fury.