Lion sightings; Catskills
How they tell
the hush when the mountain lion came out; and after, enchanted
It was at
picnics on the front lawn, un-solemn he popped from the forest lane
Across the
river and his long long tail question-marked,
flippant flipped away
Everyone
strained like giraffes
Or it was in
the purposefulness before thunder when the forest crouches, steadies
The woodsman
fetched wood from the shack, the beast in a sidelong glance
the man sidelong looking, casual then stunned
Only twigs
snapping and that was rain
Remember the
tail, they tell me; long and springy, too long for his body
You never expect to see a lion, you never go
looking for him, he just
shows up with that tail trailing high and twirled,
it tells the lion
from the stubby bobcat and the pack coyote who
have his tan but not his grace
Such are the visions for the most part,
remembered only twenty told and fused in darkness
We need lion-visions,
we need the big cat in the woods of the mind
He’s what roads and picnics have left behind
We need the true story too He came and ate three chickens in the
gardens
of the town of
No one believed when it was told that in the
tall grass of the yard
trampling it a little he belly-rolled after the kill
savoring stomach and full stretching his sleek arms
like a day’s end’s sunbather, fleeing not at all
the howling men of the house nor the women
beating pans
who having no gun hurled buckets and whatever, a
clay pot, a child’s bicycle
Nah, he’d eaten, enjoyed, and across the lazy
river swam
for the escarpment inaccessible to man.
-Christopher
Ketcham