Intimations of Bobcat

I know you are close

fur soft, providing warmth

I could follow you
till our eyes met

and yet know better
not to bother

but to leave you quietly
to your natural world

I think of
you in cold-air wildness
among boulders
inside logs under ledges
in thickets for cover

striding across mountain slope

having your shelters

spread out for nights
and days no other place,
but rather

I am watching these trails

right here how long
this everything right,
hallowed ground—

awakening.