A Eulogy Beneath the Juniper

by Harsha Venkataraman

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What a creature you were, dressed in royal fur
with your dashing silver pelt and gilded paws.
How attentive you were to the sapphire seeds
thrown by the winter's breeze, they were
berries of mountainous forests between your claws.

You a wild-eyed gold miner, born in sweet air
with a nose that simpered to a bountiful tune,
and teeth that sang its holy croons,
you could scamper to nature’s sweet melodies,
and found shedded stars in the black earth,
for you were youthful under the Juniper tree,
and knew all celestial treasures laid at its feet.

When I watched you, I sat in prayer,
prayer that you wouldn’t fear me,
prayer that I wouldn’t fear you.
I crouched beside your trembling flank,
gazed at your wondery work like man had
at the foot of gods.

Your sharp eyes never left mine, those jewels
deep as a starless sky, a sky whose jaws held life
and tongue was stained purple tasting its worth.
And when you left this world, when I found you
sullen flanked and simply slumbering,
you took starlight with you, left me blind.

You were a farmer of the heavens, your paws
ordained the rich night with discovered treasure.
If you did not cherish this land, I would,
for when I found you with your head nestled in the crook
of the Juniper’s roots, when I begged beneath the boughs
that your belly would tremble with breath, that it
wasn’t filled with eagers worms, not to be spun into silk,
when I did not touch you now as I had not before,
your lidded eyes had trapped the welkin world within,
a beauty not sullied by flies to rotting flesh.

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Harsha Venkataraman is a high school student from Texas. Her work can be found in The Lunch Ticket, The Hearth Mag, The Paper Crane Journal, and the LASA Composer.