Tiger

Mason was the first to go. They said
a tiger found him walking down the trail
behind his house.
Then, after he was dead,

Bundy moved into town. His courage failed,
he told me, sitting sweating at the bar.
"The jungle's just... so big. And I feel frail."

He meant to hide among the crowds, the cars,
the man-made smells of sewage, gasoline
from eyes that watched, implacable as stars.

The city noise, the clamor of machines,
he hoped would deafen predatory ears.
But tiger senses must have been too keen

to be defeated. Bundy met his fears
just two blocks from a busy liquor store.
No-one saw what happened.
All these years,

we never talked about the way it was before:
the tiger cub, the stake and chain, the gin,
the entertainment of the vicious, bored,

young men we were. We knew it was a sin,
but never guessed at fatal consequence,
avenging angel dressed in tiger-skin.


I'm not a fool, to doubt the evidence,
the tiger tracks round Bundy's bloodstained corpse--
though older hands, the more experienced

would tell me that my intuition's warped:
"It's twenty years now-- animals forget
and tigers don't come into town." Remorse

and fear in equal parts are what have set
my feet upon this deck. I'll be secure
and happy, once this scow-barge gets

me clear of harbor!
What's that, on the shore?
What's moving in the sea, to leave that wake
of moonlight ripples?
Let there be no more

pretense; the tiger comes aboard to take
what he is owed, and I go willingly
for he is beautiful enough to break
a heart once cracked by its own cruelty.