Trophies

The panther? It had already dragged you

As if in its jaws, across Europe.

As if trailing between its legs,

Your mouth crying open, or not even crying any more,

Just letting yourself be dragged. Its real prey

Had skipped and escaped. So the fangs,

Blind in frustration,

Crushed your trachea, strangled the sounds. The Rorschach

Splashing of those outpourings stained

Your journal pages. Your effort to cry words

Came apart in aired blood

Enriched by the adrenalins

Of despair, terror, sheer fury –

After forty years

The whiff of that beast, off the dry pages,

Lifts the hair on the back of my hands.

The thrill of it. The sudden

Look that locked on me

Through your amber jewels

And as I caught you lolling locked

Its jaws into my face. The tenacity

Of the big cat’s claim

On the one marked down and once disabled

Is a chemical process – a combustion

Of the stuff of judgement.

So it sprang over you. Its jungle prints

Hit your page. Plainly the blood

Was your own. With a laugh I

Took its full weight. Little did I know

The shock attack of a big predator

According to survivors numbs the target

Into drunken euphoria. Still smiling

As it carried me off I detached

The hairband carefully from between its teeth

And a ring from its ear, for my trophies.