Fearsome Beasts

Just northeast of Denver there is a Wild Animal Sanctuary. Lions and tigers and bears... and leopards and wolves and emus and coatimundis, oh my! Each of these creatures has been rescued - either from people who thought they would make good pets or from the circus, etc. - and given safe space to roam. The experience of seeing such beautiful beasts cared for right in my backyard was beyond breathtaking.

So tame. I am the foreign creature

amidst these powerful paws and muscular jaws.

I am intruder to be watched, judged dangerous

yet safe behind high fences.

You, with your black eyes,

despise my gaze - a voyeur

one of many smelling too excited.

You stay calm in your cage.

My breath quickens and my ancient animal self recalls you intimately.

Fearsome. Beautiful.

I am prey -

yet I pray for you.

~~~

On a different yet similar note, this past Sunday was the beginning of Advent - a time when we prepare for the coming of Christ. The scripture texts spoke both of the first coming (as a child) and of what has been called the "second" coming. In preparing for my sermon, I stumbled again across William Butler Yeats' poem "The Second Coming" - which I found both disturbing and resonant and, yes, even hopeful. I offer it for yet another "fearsome beast" reflection.


THE SECOND COMING (1920) by William Butler Yeats
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?