Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
–from William Blake’s “The Tyger”
****
Walking in the woods
behind the zoo late at night,
I know the tiger
is curled in the back corner
of the fence
where he always is.
During the day, the dog
whets the tiger’s appetite
by swinging in close
then flinging back out
into the clusters of oaks.
Even at this safe distance,
I am thinking about
what I can’t see in the dark–
its brilliant orange accreting
heat into the surrounding woods
and the horizon of its teeth,
a threat to fearless wanderers
crossing too close.
Even at this safe distance,
I am convinced
that the honeysuckle
in the daytime air
now gone
has been consumed
by its unseen mass.