Maybe He's Grateful but Get Out of His Way

The Siberian tiger leaps from the back of the truck:
He’d been caught in a snare, rescued by Russian students
Deep in the forest, tranquilized, observed, fitted with a radio
Collar, woken up as if from a human dream for tigers,
Driven back to the forest, the cage opened, the leap,
And gone.

Four hundred left. Poachers demented with greed
Want every part of the Siberian tiger but never
The whole tiger.
Credit

From Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems by Deborah Keenan. Copyright © 2007 by Deborah Keenan. Reprinted with the permission of Milkweed Editions.