Cheetah

Even with my good binoculars

it’s a buff-colored smudge in the distance.

A smudge that pivots

so the outline of an ear

becomes visible, briefly,

before it’s consumed into the whole again.

That’s it. And yet

it’s as if the world unbuttoned her dress

and we can’t get enough

of looking. This is happiness—

without the freight of happiness. Only

the machinery of our eyes

working so hard to speed through

the air thick with dust and sun,

through the tall, tangled grasses.

We’re looking through a pinprick

in the universe, bound

to any aperture, no matter how small,

glad to be swallowed completely. Hunger,

thirst, the need to pee

all disappear. We’re focusing

in now, our pupils opening. We’re way past

past regrets, failures, promises,

sunk deep

into that bit of tawny fur.