Fearful Synteny

In honor of the Year of the Tiger…

Fearful Synteny
By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection We Are the Underground.

You are my rival –
a representation of matter
against my spirit, turning
white when the Emperor rules
with absolute virtue.

A senseless creature
symbolizing anger, you are
a near deity, a king upon
whose skin the Great God
Himself sits astride.

[Disappearing in a flash of light, you
return impregnated by an alien species
seeking to rebuild their own Ark out of
the remnants of this scorched earth,
the Lamb’s sister. You represent duality
between aesthetic beauty and primal ferocity,
but in order to see one, the hand that made
Him must also make your fearful cemetery:
the physical symmetry for two main characters,
identical twins whose organs mirror one another’s…]

Nearly two million
years ago, your fossils appear,
not understood until today to be
you – a deadly, speeding arrow
launched at prey.

Charismatic, you are
the spokesperson for an entire
ecosystem at war with humanity,
needing protection, no longer able to defend itself.

Header image: Hokusai, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For more poems from We Are the Underground, please click here.