Lioness Poem by Caroline Misner

Lioness



Sakhmet knows a good day when she sees one;
the sun sprawled over the dusty savannah,
as tawny as her lover’s mane and so dry
there is no lake to swallow oars, just the vivid
rippling blue of the horizon.

Matron of pride, goddess of fear,
she growls from a temple of ancient limestone
tattooed with psalms in hieroglyphics;
she bears an ankh upon her heart,
and regards the shuddering sky.

She must kill for her mate and launder their bellies in blood;
it is so easy to fell an antelope, and prey
is plentiful, it rises over the heads of grass;
where another one has fallen
amid dismembered bones.

She treads on paws as thick as ash,
silencing her footfalls through the hollow air;
and licks the crimson drops from her snout,
she reposes at the end of the day, curled
whiskers to tail, breast to earth.

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