TAMING THE TIGER*

In the forests of the night

I will assign a symmetry 

to my fear. I will see tigers 

where there are none

believing their stripes 

and terrors are truths.

Midnight machinations

will make memories

appropriate to the present

to explain the inexplicable

from sources patterned 

and processed as accurate

perception. Resolution is 

what I seek. A frame 

for the furnace. A permission 

to heal. A lamb wanting to waken 

inside an eye, fleeced

and burning bright.

*A mash-up of Peter A. Levine’s, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma and William Blake’s, "The Tyger."