This was published in California Quarterly back in 2006.
Tag: California
Seeing the Mountain Lion
please let me
tell the truth
that I saw
it, the mountain
lion, lithe, yes
springy, legs, twitching
tail, like at
the zoo but
free on golden
hillside, in California
I had just
eaten a banana
morning at camp
counselor for kids
with HIV, beautiful
sun peeking through
fog and me
and the young
lion, that I’d
wanted to see
for hundreds of
miles hiking, camping
hours of night
and nothing, but
longing for wild
but nothing, maybe
a rattlesnake or
coyote, but then
the moment passed
and it moved
down the hill
toward the road
the next day
saw it dead
on the asphalt
I wanted to
take some of
its teeth, save
something, after so
much time waiting
but I let
it rest, sad
it was gone
Noe Valley, San Francisco
Once the Irish, the Germans, the workers pressed together, clustered little Victorians, where they were born, lived, then died. Now babies in strollers, babies pressed against mom, against dad, toddlers wobbling, wide blocks of deconstructed, reconstructed, houses, pasted photos, smiling women and men, realtors, listing, listed, selling, sold. White buses, elevated people, wearing laptops like blankets, heading south to touch more technology. Hilly hills, wisps of fog, oceanic clouds, permanent winter like they say Twain said. Past and present commingle in gusts of wind, September summers, sometimes rain and rainbows.
Daniel W. Polk 