Poetry: “Snow Leopard Villanelle,” by Raphael Kosek

from a high school typing class

Snow leopards are graceful animals with soft fur
the students type over and over again as well as
They live in the high rugged mountains of Tibet.

Does each word imprint like the leopard’s paw
set down in stealth on the cold white world where
snow leopards are graceful animals with soft fur?

As their fingers search out the abstract letters clotting
on the screen, can the typists divine the leopard’s hunger
as it roams the high, rugged mountains of Tibet?

Can they envision the bumper sticker, “Free Tibet”
taking on flesh as burgundy monks flood the streets,
while snow leopards stay shy animals, seldom seen?

Do they hear how the word Tibet tolls like a bell
thrumming some grave irrevocable message
in the high, rugged mountains of the mind?

Is it too much to ask of a person to remain conscious,
to set your fingers ablaze with the solemn knowing
that snow leopards are graceful animals with soft fur
and they live where you will likely never go?

Raphael Kosek is the author of American Mythology (Brick Road Poetry Press) and two prize-winning chapbooks, Harmless Encounters (2022) and Rough Grace (2014). Her worked received four Pushcart nominations and was featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She served as the 2019–2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate where she teaches at Dutchess Community College.  www.raphaelkosek.com