Doug McHargue is photographed at Hickory Museum of Art reading a poem inspired by the Joel Sartore piece at Art of Poetry on September 16, 2017.

Doug McHargue
NOT YOUR AVERAGE TREE
After “Lion in Tree” by Joel Sartore

My aunt’s peacocks
would come to our house,
fly to our strangest trees,
gangly misshapen cedars,
and shriek ungodly cries
through dark
Flannery O’Conner nights.

Morning’s heat, they tip toed
home under an X-ray sun,
exotic feathers drooping
like dulled sparrows defeated.

I did not know these same
summer nights there was a lion
who took to leaf rich trees,
more royal than our backyard
grotesques, just the spot
where he’d find calm
from always looking
over his shoulder,
could peer down at us,
How about a little scratch
behind the left ear