The Cage

The world unwinds
in ribbons of highway, speed read
by vehicles spewing black fumes.

The tigress watches
from the far corner of her cage                                    
the traffic of faces.
Fingers point and voices bounce
off walls, a painted jungle.
A rush of tiny footsteps
courses down the swaying pine bridge:
a child looking for Mother.
The tigress bounds forward
presses her nose to the iron bars.

My child leans over from the car seat
presses her lips on a blue spot
on my upper left arm.

In the ocean of stars
a hurricane forms.
The tigress roars, tearing through time
in search of her own image.
In the storm's eye
deep calm of lilacs.

I breathe in the scent
of a child sleeping
rocked in the rhythm of
the dented pitch road.

The tigress waits.
Her tears dissolve the bars. Her claws
become soft white hands.

A single grain of millet solidifies
ten billion illusions.