Today's poem is by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Bobcat
       

Sleepless, I huddled in a rocker
on the back porch, jacket zipped,
hood up, invisible—or so I thought,
inside the shadow of a full Milk Moon.

She crossed just shy of the tall grass,
twenty feet in front of me, lit up
in creamy glow—dark spotted, huge feet
heaving her up the weedy bank to the edge
of the woods, ear tufts suddenly alert,
head swiveling over her shoulder.

I have seen that look before, in a photograph
of my great grandmother—a woman
stalked and caught. I have imagined her
screech in the night, my own throat
suddenly airless, the hairs on the back
of my neck stinging, the cat ricocheting
through the pines, gone.

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Copyright © 2023 Kari Gunter-Seymour All rights reserved
from Alone in the House of My Heart
Ohio University Press · Swallow Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission