This one has been painted to look like
a jungle, with lush green foliage
though which the disinterested eye
of a tiger looks into our eyes as he passes,
trailing his bitter spore. December,
the streets rocky with ice, passengers
hunched in parkas and stocking caps
as they rock through the slippery streets
on a bus advertising a zoo,
each rider pressed into this bale of ferns,
this leafy block of Africa. Though a boa
constrictor thick as a telephone pole
unreels across their window, they still
can see out, as through a one-way mirror
or the gauzy film left by a dream.
The riders see just what the tiger sees,
and with his same impassivity:
an old man on a corner, catching a cough
in his fist, and the crumpled white face
of a woman who falls to one knee.
--Ted Kooser, 2002