Mountain Lion

Ahead of me on a fork off Paradise Road
a slender moving muscle inside a lean coat
swaggers beside the high weeds,
knows I am behind him
yet
refuses to yield along golden California
brush and withering blue, red, and yellow
wildflowers.

His pace is easy, unhurried, full of
wild muscle being, I yearn to be like him
in stride and ambling joy, closed in
on himself like a meditating monk
with his breviary early in prayer.

I slow the motorcycle to a lion's crawl
and feel for the first time in months
the weight of my own tan skin, nappy,
wanting matted fur full of brambles.

A black snort pushes out from my helmet
and black tires melt to dark pads with
clicky claws on broken asphalt.

My pulse matches the pace and rhythm of
panting cylinders and liquid lion in front
of me, now closer, its smell a subtle musk
of something recently killed and eaten
in the cold vapored morning air.

He is grand, serene and full of wild
indifference---my breath carries the scent
Of something animal killed and eaten,
Blood around the lips, heavy-eyed.

The engine purrs with hungry sounds
within me.

--Dennis Patrick Slattery (from Twisted Sky, Winchester Canyon Press, 2007).