Richard T. Leshner

•

My mother
knew him for longer.
That cheetah,
on his 1950s racetrack
chasing no prey in particular.
That eagle,
duty-bound 20 years
to the Air Force.
That mole,
in hollowed-out Cheyenne
mountain, working with the C.I.A.
That rattlesnake,
whose shirt-pocket tic-tac music
always preceded his arrival.
That bear,
with those paw-thump hugs, without which
I have now gone two years.
And finally that dolphin, who,
comatose-submerged in the end, swam hard
for the surface, trying but unable
to show us all one last backflip.

She lost much more
than a man
much more
than a father
that wet Texas morning.