Lioness Asleep

Content that now the bleeding bone be swept Out of her reach, she lay upon her side. In a blonde void sunk deep, she slept, she slept Bland as a child, slept, breathing like a bride. Color of noons that shimmer as they sing Above the dunes, her sandy flanks heaved slow. Between her paws curled inward, billowing Waves of desert silence seemed to flow. The crowd was gone, the bars were gone, the cage Thinned into air, the sawdust and the fleas Winnowed by sleep to nothing. After food, Absence possessed her: bliss keener than rage, If slumber’s prisoner at a bound could seize This ghostly freedom, lapping it like blood.