The Sunday Poem: Jungle Book part IV

IV.
Tiger-Shape

I hear the ancient creaking of trees too mighty
to support themselves tonight, the tired cackling
of monkeys, like men grown too old to understand
the world, or to stop pretending that they had, once.

There is whispering of water dripping from cupped leaves
far in the canopy, as it passes from bough to bark
in a procession of hands that do not touch, streaking
stripes of silver through the air as it shines and beads.

Creepers dangle pliant and slender, lianas that brush
my shoulders when I struggle through them, breaking
the vines and painting myself with yellow sap,
sticky and oozing down my forehead, marking me.

The tiger’s stripes were painted thus, when he
ran through the creepers one night, panicking
and stretching his sore muscles as far as they could
go, the night without a moon that he killed Man.

And now springy grass cushions my feet, ribbed
woody stalks of bamboo reach to catch the birds,
and a web of plants holds the whole thing together,
binding me in my yellow stripes, a shadow and a shape.

Knoll to log to stone, small hollows hide the chiya fox,
sly and hooded cobras, the cowering Indian sambhur,
and though this fallen log is a banquet for the insects
tonight the moon is a hole, and I must go hunting.

This is actually the second time I have posted an excerpt from the “Jungle Book” poems. The first time there was an extensive note, which you can read at this entry entitled “Jungle Book part VI.”