Between the ivy embankments the car slept
and kept rolling, and the black lion was painted on the sign,
even though the safari park was no longer in business,
and the lion’s mane was an unrequited circle cracking in the sun
in the ivy, chin contour a crown turned on its top
with stubble jag, and a downward mouth–the sickle
for rivets across an atrophy of baked yellow brow.

Even though the safari park was no longer in business,
you believed things were alive all over the place.
Voices hidden taught along the rachis of fern blade
at the lion’s blackness made you make every attempt at
watching for his eyes. At the lion’s nose you thought up names
for all the things that were sowing the blood in the air,
and a drum for the milkweed that wrapped their wailings.