Rik Wilkinson
Mountain Lion
It was a revelation – to discover winter
in New Mexico means snow
in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
and frost in the desert where in summer
the heat glares from blood-orange rocks;
and in winter, mountain lion stalk the edges
of ice fields, nudging the Yaqui’ places of power.
Imagine don Genaro dancing over ice
melting from the Mountains of Picoris
and after Mexico City it is easy to imagine
Don Juan alive & well and wintering in England.
He’d cope – finding places of power in the fog
and sleet. I imagine him flying, flying over
the A1 motorway like a Christmas angel.
He’d say it was a matter of will.
Nothing would stand in his way.
We have learned some lessons – but we
are such feckless ‘warriors’; indulging the little
power we hold in the secrets of our histories . . .
What foolishness. So the would-be lover
Resorts to dreaming; the dreamer
Conjuring desperately for the dreamed . . .
Deep in the cave of sleep, discover the reek
of mountain lion - facing each fur, lapping
ammoniac salts, stirring the lingua of blood.
And after the drunken prowl, the muscular mating,
the satiation and the growling to ground
overpowered by sleep . . . enter the starlight.
The Great Bear’s shrinking cold
eats at their coats until hunger breaks in.
Their awakening is a yawning prolapsus
snapped shut in darkness. Their yellow eyes
turn to the sky, cracking open like dawn horizons.
Page(s) 26-27
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