Flushed

Running the Highline,

a fleeting thought

of the threat of lions,

turn my head to find

the dogs chasing one.

Tail stretched out long,

a comet through my heart.

It ran; the dogs were safe,

just this painful weight

of coincidence

to bear back down

the mountain.

The thought and then

the conjured beast,

the liquid leap

to the tree and then

the long run down,

through all those years

of running through woods,

sensing but not seeing.

Claudia Putnam

CLAUDIA PUTNAM lives among the Indian Peaks of Colorado. Her work can be found online at Facets, Switched-on Gutenberg, Conte, and Literary Mama. It also appears or will soon appear in many print journals, including Weber: The Contemporary West, Artful Dodge, Flint Hills Review, Rock & Sling, Roanoke Review, MARGIE, RHINO, Cimarron Review, California Quarterly, Tar Wolf Review, and elsewhere.