Leopard
Secretive, silent as a trickle of sap,
part of the untamed darkness.
Quicksilver in the half-light, I caught you recoiling
into the greyness; grey into grey
you are the shadow of a shadow to the night.
Remote in the night’s dark metal, you haunt the wild
that haunts me, too. The ripple of sinew in your tread,
the satanic cast in the cold jade of your eyes
are the echoes of a creation perfected.
Under the glow of a saffron moon, the acacia tree,
thin as bird bones,
crabs its bent limbs toward the immensity of the sky’s
space.
Somewhere out there I hear it: the molten cry
of a yellow baboon.
Quick, like springs uncoiling, smooth as a plume of
smoke,
you flow upwards to the crack of snapping wood
and warm blood falls to the waiting ground.
Page(s) 9
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The