Early evening, late in February,
I see a tiger in the shadows by the fence.

There are believed to be no tigers in Worcester
at the moment.  Our lone animal park
holds cougars and polar bears.  If anyone here
owns a surreptitious tiger, they’ve been keeping it
well-concealed. 

I watch the shadow tiger move past the cars
into the scrubby, snow-stained backyard. 
Perhaps it is a Siberian tiger.

If a tiger once tastes human flesh, it is said
that it will remain a maneater forever.  This one
clearly sees me, but makes no move in my direction.
It may have eaten.  It may not know how sweet I am.

Or perhaps that’s just a legend.  Perhaps the dream tiger,
real or unreal, has tried a man and found it wanting,
is seeking goat or sheep or some game creature instead.

The tiger (and I am certain now that it is unreal
but cannot take my eyes from it) has stopped by the oak tree.
It looks up at something.  Perhaps at unfamiliar bark
and a scent it’s not had to identify before.  Perhaps
it is listening for voices it may recognize.

I call it, using a name I haven’t spoken in years.
It turns and tenses, fangs and stripes bared
but transparent. What I see through its body
seems menacing in a way it was not before
as if there was an overlay of pain before me
that I am seeing only now.

Mystery cat, tiger in the mind.
I long for you to be more real than I can conjure.
Come and tear me up, leave my true blood on the ground.
I am tired of my fear of ghosts,
wish to fight something solid,
to die for something real.

The feather
on the sidewalk
could have come
from any bird.

I want it to be
from a robin.

It’s time, I think,
for spring:

they’ve been gone a long while now
(although it’s a lie
that they all fly south; I’ve seen them in packs
among the bittersweet vines
in Harwichport
in deep December),
and they rarely appear
this early in the city,

I’d like to think that
one made an exception for me
and me alone,

knowing I need the mud-time
badly right now.

I want to have my feet sink into
what was once frozen
and come out sucking and black
with heavy dirt,
because that way I could feel
like a farmer
tuned into the signs
and signals of newness,

and that bird would be telling me
things only I needed to know
as I knocked off the sludge
and smiled.