Mia In My Mind Poem by Linda Hepner

She is a tigress in a cage,
all that beauty burning behind bars.
Meant to roam and leap, one mighty bound
she makes from grassy dell to massive rock
where standing fiercely she surveys
the ground below, above: the stars.

Her yellow glinting eyes catch quivers in the grass,
her golden hairs the shivers in the air;
she knows the wheeling hawk will swoop and swallow what
in ignorance disturbs the rustling grasses.
What vanity, what fatuous attempts
to pass its life so blinkered, so hidebound
by narrow tunnels like a rulered mind
deluded from danger stirring in the wind.

The tigress has a higher role to play,
disdains the mouse, the mole, the puny man,
and listens for the rustle in the leaves
of trees and forests; has a bigger plan
to trap the trapper, and her mind exceeds
the driving hunger or her selfish needs –
she will devour the beauty of the dawn,
she will caress the morning with her paws,
assuage her appetite on sights and sounds,
show that like God there are such mighty laws
that life is laughable and though she dares
to leap into the unknown, has no care
if she catch him or fall into his snare.

The forest is this creature’s vast domain.
She knows what brought her here and what’s to come;
Death is her only master, dressed as Deity,
but she’s not fooled and sees the frame
of this vast picture where she blazes like a sun.

Instead she stands still breathing, aching behind bars
or paces in her cage, her heart aflame
with anger at the wickedness of man,
unworthy to look up and see the stars.

LRH mSh 7.11.09 For Mia Phoebus,
aka Ethel Elkovsky, critic, inspiration, guru, cruelly imprisoned in her body.