Finding a Destiny That Fits by Jan S. Harry

Few
choose to suicide
by leaping into the pit
of the Manchurian tiger

as a young Chinese man
did
at Shanghai zoo 4/1/85

Clasping
its jaws
over the young man’s head
blocking
his view
of a banished world
the tiger
accepted
the offered life

Tiger, I will
be flesh of thy flesh

Afterwards
it was said
the young man
was of unsound mind

No one
doubted the sanity
of the tiger

From: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/19990805130000/http://www.asauthors.org/web_of_poets/Harry/poems/finding_destiny.html

Date: 1998

By: Jan S. Harry (1939-2015)