Jaguar Poem by Robert Dana

Early evening.
The trees turning black and blacker.
The snow turning blue.
Winter clamped and hard.
*
Only the fire consoles me.
Fire.
And the eyes and mouth and hands of fire.

*
Twin birds in each ear.
A fox on each cheekbone.
The candle flaming along its flat nose.
Exploding on its skull, a blue cosmos.
The dream-tiger's head
snarls silently on the white wall.
*
Ten thousand tiny beads of many colors
pinned into beeswax over carven wood.

*
Jaguar.
Vision animal.
Power decayed into Beauty.
Mercado junk food for the soul.
In its blank, fierce eyes,
some shaman's storm of wild music still frozen there.