Live Encounters Poetry & Writing August 2025
The Snow Leopard, poems by Kate McNamara.
The Snow Leopard
I am as quiet as the cat I was named for
chameleon to the core but I know the White Goddess
it was already too late somehow in that singular moment
I cut myself on you you got into my blood
like an infection a virus there is no cure
Bach’s Fugue in G Minor there was nothing I could do.
You were all mauled so damaged you had been hunted
too long blue-eyed blazing with rage you were seeking a crevice
a shape change you needed a transfusion of energy
you were already scoping the compound you were computing
the possibilities of escape noting the exits
potential weakness in the structure are the hinges well oiled?
Yeah you scanned it like a machine your eyes were
like metallic chip reflecting nothing I always know
a master strategist I am one
there only three moves here: advance attack retreat
but you O you should have been executed on arrival
this a dangerous war there are no flesh wounds here
it is all inside in the bones that play beneath the skin
the wounded walk they shuffle forward all day
bruised by the chemical cosh fried by electrification
or pacing like a snow leopard in a fetid zoo.
O let him go free I cannot bear that image
pacing the endless cage pacing
the furry smell the golden eyes
that see all and admit to nothing
how his shoulders are coiled with muscle
always ready to spring upward here
he is another needless death in custody.
Horses
Beyond the final province we could ride out
to the place of autumn one day
riding away from fantasies from those safe roads
we travelled once now no longer certain
for the unwary no careful notes of those journeys
will help not now they are of no use
out behind the steppe plains where the great Khan once
kept a court in the kingdom of long grasses
with his shaman in that sky.
If wishes were horses we could ride away
from the cold country where spring is not a season
but a caution of blizzards where the air is ice
peeling our flesh back to bone galloping past
that old cemetery where the dead never sleep
to that country of wind where storms are born
constantly blowing our nights away.
On those desolate plains nothing is concealable
but for the moon the omens
the sound of wild horses riding away
if wishes were horses we could ride with them
into the night and the river of stars.
© Kate McNamara
Kate McNamara is a poet, playwright and critical theorist. She also works as an editor. Her plays have been performed inter-nationally and she was invited to deliver the opening address to the 4th International Conference of Women Playwrights in Galway. She has recently returned to her first love: poetry. Her works have been published in a range of formats. A founding member of the Canberra Surrealist movement, Aktion Surreal, she lives in Ainslie with her sons, cats and a menagerie of wild birds.
Oh I love these. They speak of a Charmed universe & pagan ways. Dear little blue banded bees & all a mystery.