At the gate to What Might Be, the green tiger
knows better than to cross. He’s been followed
by a rat who carries a stick and a bandanna
in which wrapped and tied and hung he keeps
a can of mushrooms, olives, and radish.
The green tiger lays at the threshold. He beads
his eyes south and watches the smoking horizon
of what What Never Should where Squirrel Speaking
English rolls under a rock. The tiger’s whiskers bend
high to Land of Whatever is Possible.
There, where light is like an sleeping eyeball, a herd of red deer
watches upwind as the stars carouse like the bottoms
of celestial fox feet and Now with silver eyes and horns
grins East, West, and sniggers with the memory of Ovid
as he’s moments away from writing Apollo’s lovelessness.
With a huff, the green tiger rises with the flexion
of Yes stung by a bee in his shoulders. The rat thinks,
“I better get back and protect my friend because I know
what the tiger’s thinking. He’ll find her, rip through
to her heart, and out of her chest will grow a stone
round like the Land of Whatever is Possible,
where birds turn red in the heated mist of the sun.”
