All That Possessed Us

Bobcat sits crouched on a flat granite rock,
Un-curles its yellow haunches and springs.
The little girl screams.
Bobcat, with a crown of tyrone berries recently gleaned,
stalks Indians with rocks, crushing acorns and
berries bursting with poisonous white powder.
She circles the teepee where it stands; a pyramid skeleton
of long sticks covered with dollar-size leaves.
There are tunnels full of pale crumpled foliage
Where we two lie, suffocated and swelling with
pink warpaint from breastbone to widow’s peak, and consider
all that drew us.

Pray becomes predator, with red half-moons on her
pale forearms.
Let’s go down, she says, to the fence
and walk through that tunnel we should stay away from,
and dig in the big anthill until we turn orange.
We’ll duck under the bushes until we come to that
green chapel with the tree that fell over
and climb on its flailing octopus limbs, high over
our heads. We feel them rising and bucking, and we wonder over
all that's moving us.

A hillside is for sparring bobcats
with plenty of daffodil prey
and crocus prey, and stickers that choke our socks
and give us thoughtful pause.
We lay,looking up, and feel ourselves falling
endlessly forward and Drowning. We snake our way
along the un-mown grass and slide through the
tearing underbrush, until we find that pine,
that massive trunk that towers like babel,and
soon we see above the green canopy. We look down,
far, far down, and for the first time, question
all that possessed us.