Lioness

I found the perfect picture for my desktop. For the longest time it had been a brightly lit shot of a stream trickling through a snowy forest. I kept losing the icons among the frosted twine of twigs. It was at first rather soothing, an invitation to peace. But after a while I found that spring running contrary to so much transpiring.

But this one right here... She's a beauty looking out over the muted horizon... a vision of waiting, hunger, contentment, natural equanimity? It is one of those black and whites that is in no way black or white and all of it so soft and unassuming, the vast African prairie bone-dry-field far as far away... brushed near and drab and seamless in sky and cloud and sunray, soft as her fur, soft and nondescript enough to be real.

Whether at peace or starving, at rest or aching to the core, facing dawn or days ending, the approaching light of East, surrendered to the West, I do not know. Nor does she.

Alive as the indiscernible hum that animates the screen, she lives silently in front of me, a lioness.

For now, ready to pounce in the next moment or pine on for another 1000 years, stalking or stalked, shot sharp to the marrow of a vital kill or soothed to stay long again and still, for now this one will do... this creature, this vision, that is, until, until...