Persistence of Memory

Somehow
it is comforting
that when I see
a big cat (tiger lion
leopard or the like)
on the television, I can still imagine
how the teeth would feel
piercing my forearm, crushing through
into the bone; I can picture the beast
pulling my arm off of me thoughtfully,
chewing on it with a break now and then
to yawn, leaving me to thrash and then succumb
to pain and blood loss just off screen
while my arm is immortalized on film,
while horrified cameramen are unable
to tear themselves away from the scene
even as the host of the show intones
warnings of the power and majesty
of these creatures, even as I died the cat
would be uninterested in that death, having enough
to hold his interest in the way the tendons
pass among his teeth, I am satisfied that this moment
would still have felt correct,
as though I had made of myself a sacrifice to prehistory
that would feel better than the quiet death of cholesterol
and old age, as if I had somehow tied myself back into
something more than what I deserve, as if the cat that killed me
allowed me a gift of understanding what the tendons in my arm
were meant to do.