Conversation With Mother Lion

Glistening,
the dark-eyed, dark-haired woman turns the corners of her lips up and invites me.
I travel to the wild land she knows
because a lion lives there.
She drinks from the bubbling spring and stands atop the shed.
Her head framed by azure sky, paws filling in grooves in the roof.
Camping on land near her, giving up other Earthly pleasures,
I wait.
Wait to encounter something of Lion. Wait for the wild feline.
After three years of tenting near the spring, learning the ways of Bird and Bear,
Elk and Deer, walking their paths, listening to songs of Wind and Thunder beings, the track of Wild Fire, the silence of Starlight and . . . . uninterrupted dreaming . . . .
She comes.
At dusk the she Lion cries out, her voice washing through and through.
Long forgotten sound,
no fear overtakes me.
I am at once ecstatic, content in the bath of her voluminous cry.
For the wild force is still at the helm,
still running things.
coursing through her throat.

Later, that dark night sitting by the fire, satiated with stillness,
no stars shine down.
Only blackness surrounding dancing flames.
Only the night, holding tired bones in warmth and comfort, embracing within her infinite chest - wrapping and
wrapping this woman worn by traffic and sidewalks.

Then surprisingly, out of the emptiness by my log seat, the whimper of an infant.
The meow of a tiny cat.
Realizing in a frozen instant that it is her cub. I know
she has lifted her kitten into her mouth, with sharp teeth and carried her child to this fire.
I stiffen in the magnitude of this love and trust.
Freeze in fear that two Lions are so close I could look into living marble cat eyes,
smell damp fur.
My eyes dare not search, staring only into hot wood blaze.

We have a silent conversation, the wild Cat mother and I.
Her animal muscles ignore my tension, sensing only my emanating thoughts.
I say silently, “I am so glad you are here.” She answers silently,
“I cannot raise this infant unless you teach your two-legged family to keep this
wilderness
wild.”

This is all I know of her.
I do not know how she leads the young one
toward her life
away from us.

I don’t drive ten miles for a special cup of coffee now.
Don’t want to make it harder for her to cross the road.
Don’t toss my sweater because I tire of the color
for dying the new one fouls the water in our stream.
Don’t want to change this magnificent world as it is now for that.
Won’t silence her cry.

In the heart of your heart will you?
Do you want to?

The Wild,
in all it’s darkness, in all it’s rough odor
can dig the ancient root of you down.
Is the only one who can.