The Lioness and Androcles
Kelly Mathews, September 2009
I lay with a fever in my cool cave,
my paw infected because of a small thorn buried deep under a claw.
When the dark-haired man comes seeking refuge & finds me,
he does not easily take a rock and
break my head open with it.
He speaks to me kindly, approaches slowly,
strokes quite softly the haunch, the flank leading to my paw.
I mewl like a kitten, when I mean to growl in fear.
My body is quite limp.
Then he digs deep, takes out the thorn,
squeezes the old blood from my paw,
and I growl and purr.
He cleans my paw, tears off strips of his clothing and binds me.
He cups water in his hands, trickles it in my mouth.
He falls asleep next to me.
His scent is thick with meat
and feathered with flame.
I lick the salt from his brow,
curl around him, knead his back,
lick his neck.
I am purring as I have not since I lost my pride.
Deep night comes and I feel well enough to hunt,
bring back a deer.
I do not like it when he builds a fire, at first,
but then, as the smoke fills the cave and the fat and grease
sizzle, I creep close to him, my paw throbbing.
As he throws me a leg, I admire how the whip scars stripe his back.
After I eat my first cooked meat and I see he is done,
I lick the rocks & bones clean.
I smell his hands, his arms, his beard, his face
lick all the grease from them,
he strokes my head, me purring all the while.
He leans close to me, whispers, tenderly,
“My name is Androcles.”
I sleep well.
Later when I am out hunting and caught,
I am not strong enough to fight of a dozen armed men.
They have a cell for me that smells of fear and death.
This place is darker, starker than my cave ever was.
No man ever cooked a meal and shared it with the beasts here.
My paw is completely healed now.
I want nothing more than to sink my fangs in
and rip asunder with my claws those who put me here.
My hunger grows every moment until I am my hunger.
I am what men fear most, an open, red,
ravenous maw of glistening teeth,
my tail whipping back and forth,
hair standing on end
I am the ultimate predator, aroused
by shouting, screams, grunting, hooves thudding,
guts gorged and devoured, split by swords.
Then, they open the gate to my cell.
I slowly investigate the way to the light, slowly
as my hunger is quick. Roaring,
I smell flesh, salt, sweat, blood,
bound towards it in a leap,
the bare, vulnerable skin, my paws pinning the lean body to the ground,
my tongue upon it, my jaws around it, when the scent and smell
say Androcles.
He tastes so very good.
My jaw aches, &
then the rest of me, when I release him from my jaws.
I put my head down between my paws,
cannot look him in the eyes.
Such silence around the arena
where there was
every sort of noise.
The king proclaims,
“The slave is master of this beast!”
Kelly Mathews was born and raised in San Diego, California. The rich culture there provided the perfect growing conditions for Kelly’s imagination. Surrounded by generations of people who loved telling and reading good stories and poetry, giving Kelly a sense of the mythological in her own life.
