King of the Jungle

There was that time the silver-backed gorilla threw a softball-sized dirt clod at me

As I observed him at the St. Louis zoo.

The dustball disintegrated into a million grains of sand 

When it his the wall of the enclosure

Next to where I stood.

Or the time the American Bison marched toward us down the centerline of the highway,

As we sat dumfoundedly in our friend's new Dodge 

That we had borrowed for our trip out West

To Yellowstone.

His red eye did not regard us when he passed the driver's window.

Once, my friend and I were hunting squirrels in the wood

Behind my grandfather's cornfields

When a buck came crashing through the underbrush,

Unaware of us.

He stopped ten feet in front of us, then snorted a loud pffsssshhhh.

Another time I sat upon the leafy detritus with my back against an Ash tree.

Two coyotes walked behind me,

Just inches away,

Pretending not to see me,

Or not pretending, perhaps.

At the age of ten I was riding my bike though the neighborhood

When a frenzied bluejay took notice of me.

He cackled and cawed

As he dived and swooped in a flurry of blue and white and black,

Pecking thumbtacks into the top of my head.

I sat in the tire swing for twenty minutes that day,

Before that crazy Dalmatian lost his mind

And began ripping into the flesh on the side of my stomach.

I beat his head:

His jaws did not slake.

But it is this tiny rod that will have its way with me

And finish me off, in the end.

Devouring me from the inside,

Turning my body against itself

In ague suicidal.