A Dangerous Age

I curl up to sleep under the table
at staff meetings, and no one dares to wake me:
they don't know where the buzzing
rattle comes from, when they step too near,
but they damn well know what it means.

Nothing of me is safe.
My heart beats like a son of a bitch;
my blood foams, boils over. Never
have I been so ferocious, so glad to live.
I climb the sky with the Sun. Where I bite
I leave marks. I sharpen my claws on mountains
and tear them to shreds.

It is a dangerous age, they say.
Hah. They have no idea.