The Moon Is …

Unblinking, coal-gem ringed,

The moon is a leopard’s stalking-death eye:

Cold-hot fixed intensity

In the star and cloud printed

Flung wide and far cloak of a sky;

Stretched full-tight on the cruel tenterhooks

Of heaven’s Frames.

Claws that have known blood (and will again) –

Sheathed and still in predator pads –

Rest in balanced pre ambush assassin tension

On civilisation’s compromised horizons.

Twitchless attack-habituated tail is iron disciplined,

White intelligent intuit-whiskers gauge the air; dividing

Life’s remaining brief clocks

Into ever smaller periods