Snow Tiger

Ghost sun half

hidden, where did you go?

There’s always a mother

of some other creature

born to fight for her young.

But crawl out of your hide,

walk upright like a man,

& you may ask if hunger is the only passion

as you again lose yourself

in a white field’s point of view.

In this glacial quiet

nothing moves except—

then a flash of eyes & nerves.

If cornered in your head by cries from a cave

in another season, you can’t forget

in this landscape a pretty horse

translates into a man holding a gun.