My mind is a forest. A tiger dwells there.
He burns as he paces to measure his lair.
His flaming flanks trail a meshed veil of cervelt;
His neck is encircled with a twisted belt.
He lopes with a measured and leisurely stride,
His tail thrashes wildly, his eyes blank-shine wide.
The flailing mesh snarls in each close-tangled twig,
Constricting his step as it locks bud-green sprig.
The woven belt tightens around tender throat;
His strength turns to weakness, a tethered scapegoat.
The forest is his, to explore as he will,
Forever impeded; his freedom will ****.

I may stand straight and proud,
Unwelcome,
A prickling threat to those who venture near;
Reserved and self-contained, the sharded sum
Of childhood spent attaining a veneer.
Yet look beyond the surface, to a heart
That I have cut out night and night afore;
To ease the choke of reminiscence’ smart
And yet, by morning, it is full once more.
Dark wields the blade of fear and of regret,
Despondency and bleakness to excise;
But come the day, my dawning sense is met
With love’s sweet surging, burgeoning sunrise.
Have patience, and my cactus heart will bear
Life-giving sap that heals the cuts we share.

One eye askew, obsidian sphere of wonder,
Watches older dog dream-chase and yelp;
Then shakes his ears, three turns, a sigh, looks yonder
To learning circled round in loving help.

Her life was no less lived for being small.
Dried seed blew free, grew higher when new-soiled;
Death’s scything arc did not erase it all.

Young woman past who heeded nuptial call,
Encased within a shrinking sphere she toiled,
Her life was no less lived for being small.

Her words’ kind cadence, scattered on the fall,
Formed searching roots that linked with minds, uncoiled;
Death’s scything arc did not erase it all.

Her hand’s work shielded tender head ‘gainst squall,
The head grew tall, a life’s work near unspoiled,
Her life was no less lived for being small.

Her hopeful gaze a silent, warning shawl,
An easing balm when agitation roiled,
Death’s scything arc did not erase it all.

Some other little lives now can recall
Her equanimity, when life’s plans are foiled.
Her life was no less lived for being small.
Death’s scything arc did not erase it all.

Could they have known, their chin’s tilt angled high,
At towers that grew to cast a twilight gloom
Unbroken by the sun’s slow chart ‘cross sky,
Fluorescent shopsigns starring streetside flume?
Flux and stasis flowing through their time,
They held against the ticking clock or bomb;
Strobing, flickering, dimming down a crime.
New buildings bloomed, with holes cut in their side,
For dragons peering for a South Sea gain,
Crouched high on boulders, astride mountainside,
Sun sparking on the dragon’s mark of Cain.
Though dragons loom and shadow out the light,
The Fragrant harbour’s lustre blazes bright.