Trapped

Peering from within the bars,
Piercing eyes; both cold and cruel.
Shadows dance from side to side,
Waiting for the fatal duel.

          Body resting, ears alert,
          Muscles ready to perform.
          Silence now but not for long,
          Like the calm before a storm.

                    Boxed in like a guinea pig,
                    Snatched away from wilderness.
                    There is no joy, only pain,
                    Nothing more than bitterness.

                              Lack of freedom, lack of choice,
                              Unaware of why he's there.
                              Are they blind or are they deaf,
                              For his cries they cannot hear.

I wrote this poem in high school, when I was seventeen or eighteen years old. At the time, it was about a tiger in captivity.¹

Three decades later, I found myself reading it differently. The poem had not changed, but I had. What once felt imagined had become an unexpected metaphor for an experience I could never have anticipated as a teenager.

It reminded me that stories and poems continue to evolve alongside us. Sometimes we spend years discovering what we were really trying to say.

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1. Featured Image: Siberian Tiger (David Saddler, 1983, via Flickr) – used under CC BY 2.0 ↩︎