Tiger and Owl

I Tiger

Tiger not too bright any more
the treats for your pelt
as heartfelt for your extinction
as sincere, the reward for finding you again

Out there among beer, flags and football teams
lost in emblem now the form of you
yawning there in the grainy footage
At the Zoo in 1936

Do I feign a pall of consternation?
at your assassination by inversion
of the time we owed to you
Tiger, unrepentant repeated now

By those dim lights in facsimile
I can only see you through imperfect glass
that reflects our painted nostalgic image
still looking, looking in for you

II Owl

In the park sits Owl
High on bench and drenched
in the mangle of branches and shadow
Feet, like children's feet barely making ground

And contact with the daydreaming past is found
In here, a verdant green retreat from
The line of lost beauty in that other retractable world
I worm myself from each day,

to take in:
The nursing birdsong, lost leaves and sweet damp gifts of green
That in the bowers lost might be
Swinging easy, my way.

And the ringed hermetically sealed
Shadows that mark time in the trees
The gaps that fall between the degrees
Of epochs greater than mine

No bottle of wine, no needle pointing south, no pill
Just gallons and gallons of air, to be gulped and thrilled at.
To be gulped and gulped down.