Fear
This sudden awareness and yet this sudden arrest:
Like a gazelle who spies the leopard’s spots and stands erect,
Its ears sensing strange sounds
Yet its gangly legs like roots do not sway and
For a moment their eyes meet
Before the leopard leaps and the gazelle runs.
I wrote this poem a year and three days ago. I almost didn’t recognize this as mine. This is the original and rough draft:
On Sunday morning, long before dawn,
I glanced at the house door.
How came it to be open?
When last night I had clicked it locked
I pondered this and then—
A sudden step and creek against the kitchen floor
This sudden awareness and yet this sudden arrest:
Like a gazelle who spies the leopard’s spots and stands erect,
Its ears sensing strange sounds
Yet its gangly legs like roots do not sway and
For a moment their eyes meet
Before the leopard leaps and the gazelle runs.
…And the rough draft:
Fear
I pay homage to you dear sir,
For the diverse ways you claw at us
Whispering insipid ways of
Waging weary wars
Or the way you hold all reason captive.
But for Supreme Mercy, you’d have
Our senses too.
Like the gazelle who spies the leopard’s spots and stands erect,
Its ears sensing strange sounds
Yet its gangly legs like roots do not sway and
For a moment their eyes meet
Before the leopard leaps and the gazelle runs.
