Spencer Holst: “Four Snow Leopards”

Four snow leopards in transit by train to the Cincinnati zoo were by accident loosed from their cage, and unbeknownst to their sleeping keeper, they leaped from the slowly moving boxcar at sunset, together disappearing into a Kansas field burgeoning with wheat that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was not until midnight, when the train pulled into the Chicago station, that their absence was discovered.

A small forest rose like an island in the sea of wheat. The leopards made for the trees. In a  month there will be snow.

From Brilliant Silence (Station Hill, 2000)