Lions Who I Never Knew Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There are lions there- further inland, underneath airplanes
That go everyday leaping over them:
Lions yawning, overfed: the tourists gaping with even
Bigger eyes-
Lions surrounded by a constant stream of cars down the road
From where I used to live:
I used to hear them every day before I had to go to school;
And when I lingered in my truancy,
I would hear them snoring all day like fire snoring up a
Forest-
The canals around them making them save, and the yellow of
Their kingly coats reflected in the sky:
The lions of the offspring that were once overfed, still are
Overfed-
Lions who I never knew but once lived so close to me:
Lions who I never knew, who will never see a single wave in the
Sea.