A Few Facts About Tigers

For Dulce, who has a way with tigers, for Rachel, who told me about Anna Pavlova, the ballerina in the snow, and for Beatrice, always a dancer.

Tigers cannot be trained.

If you could only assemble enough pieces of their would-be handlers,

You could ask them yourself.

The creatures you see in circuses,

Those are not tigers.

Those are squirrels,

Fed to bursting

And painted with stripes.

Tigers are solitary.

But sometimes, at night, one will leap soundlessly through an open bedroom window,

And sit for hours--

Dazzled by the reflected moon light

Off a brass bed frame.

Tigers are fascinated with dancers.

Tigers have great rough tongues,

And their hearts beat slowly, steadily.

Once, there was a ballerina in the snow--

She had gotten off the train and

Stepped into the Russian winter,

Intent on sending the snow back up into the sky

So that she could appear in the capital that night.

A tiger met her there.

(or it may have been a tigress)

After dancing in St. Petersburg,

She invited this tiger into her bed.

Her manager had been going to object, but thought better of it,

And went grumbling off to his room at the end of the hall instead.

Tigers are naturally graceful beyond measure.

The next night, before the Czar, the ballerina danced with a tiger;

She knew that tigers can be

And that tigers are

The most beautiful dancers of all.

Tigers fall in love only once in their lives.

After the Royal command performance, the dancer disappeared for two weeks.

A staretz arriving from the countryside reported having seen a ballerina in the snow,

Dancing either with God

Or a very large tiger.

A short time later,

Confined to her bed,

Unable to breathe,

The dancer acknowledged that she was dying.

Her manager scolded and wept.

Her devotees buried her hotel in bouquets.

"Listen," she whispered,

"I have danced with a tiger

And by doing so,

We sent the snow back up into Heaven--

Something that even God and the angels cannot do."

Ballet, the arts, all of that, are one thing--

But a tiger, once having loved, will never change its mind.

Tigers, the last romantics, cannot be trained, humbled or caged.

I invite you, fool, to try.

__________

Mrs. Icarus

For months, Icarus takes up the entire garage and driveway to build a pair of enormous wings.

He enlists the opinions of his guy friends.

Six or seven of them stand around on a Saturday afternoon, staring at Icarus' half-built contraption.

"I'd use balsa," pronounces one.

"No, your balsa wood is too light. I'd go with your teak or your cherry wood," opines another.

"Or mahogany," intones a third, and six bill caps swivel toward him scornfully. "Or not."

"Look, shithead, it's not a fuckin' flyin' desk," explains the fattest one, helpfully.

Mrs. Icarus hardly sees her husband, and when she does, he is buried under a layer of sawdust and epoxy.

She asks him, "How's it going out there?"

He says something about struts and heads to the refrigerator.

Icarus' work-in-progress merits spreads in Amateur Aviation Monthly and Cockpit.

Icarus receives advice from any number of men, all beginning with, "What you've got to do is..." or "What you've got to understand is..."

There is a lot of nodding and placing of feet firmly apart.

A lot of rather hairy arms get crossed, or reach to point out a flaw.

There is a lot of calling each other "dumb motherfucker", followed by hearty laughter.

Finally the day arrives when Icarus is ready to try the new wings he has labored so long on.

He soars, up with the birds!

He rises, closer and closer to the sun!

Then the special wax he ordered from the J.C. Whitney catalog melts and he and his wings drop like a piano in a cartoon.

"Dumb motherfucker," say his friends.

The following year, Mrs. Icarus decides to build some wings.

She works on them whenever she has a minute.

Her friends ask her if she is okay, if she is keeping busy.

"Mhm," she says, and sips her coffee.

Mrs. Icarus uses stuff she had in her sewing basket,

Some sheets that she found on sale,

And Feather-Brite from the Joanne Fabric store.

Lots of Feather-Brite.

So, one Tuesday night in June, after work, after dinner, she decides to try out her wings.

Her dog thinks this is a fine idea.

Her son says, "Don't crash. I need a ride to the mall."

Mrs. Icarus kisses them both and up she goes.

She stays up.

A dozen bill caps turn toward the sky, and their owners are finally speechless.

Their dozen wives look up and shriek and smile and wave like maniacs.

Mrs. Icarus waggles her wings at them.

Upon landing, there is laundry to fold, and a dog to be walked.

There is a child to be driven to the mall.

He lets her pull right up to the front entrance where all his friends can see. This is astonishing.

"Have fun, Daedalus," she says as he opens the passenger door.

She knows better than to try to kiss him, but he does turn around for a moment to give her a wink.

He is fourteen.

He is proud of his mom.

She pulls away from the curb smiling, happy in the knowledge of what it feels like to fly.

________

Walnut Tree

A walnut tree

Leans over my house like a mother

And in the morning,

My bedroom window is shaded by her leafy branches hanging down

Like unbound hair.

All summer long,

She is a comforting companion

And she rustles in the breeze

As if she were folding clean sheets

Or moving about in long old-fashioned skirts.

But each year,

Usually in November,

She drops all her leaves in a single day,

As if autumn had simply broken her heart at a single stroke.

This winter just gone,

I knew exactly how she felt--

Both of us bare,

Bereft,

Bearing the weight of a hard winter on our shoulders.

Did my walnut tree know

That Nature will out?

Was she being coy

Not sharing what she knew?

Once again it's spring and she

Leans over the ones she loves.

She knows that, all unexpectedly,

Someone brought their sweetness

And my world greened up,

With summer and a warming trend

Blowing in from a western sky.

__________