I scratched my ears, I scratched my chin:
     What could, what should we do?
I did a dozen somersaults
     But didn’t have a clue.
My mind was in a lather, like
     A headful of shampoo.

What was the Tiger thinking? Was
     She angry? Was she bored?
I made a hundred faces but
     Felt absolutely floored.
And then the Tiger all at once
     Leaned back her head and roared

With laughter. We were so relieved,
     We hugged ourselves in glee.
(It helps to have along with you
     The kind of chimpanzee
That tigers find amusing. Yes,
     It helps to have a Me.)

I’ve told this story many times —
     To all the magazines,
To paupers and to presidents,
     To communists and queens,
To diplomats in formal dress
     And journalists in jeans.

I’ve told them how we camped for months
     Beside the tiger’s lair —
Professor M and Zinc and I
     And Muggs the millionaire.
We hardly let her out of sight;
     We trailed her everywhere.

We watched her by the riverbank,
     We watched her on the plains,
We watched her in the blazing sun
     And in the summer rains,
We watched her silent with the ducks
     Or whooping with the cranes.

And when we weren’t watching her,
     We put ourselves at ease
Stretched out beneath the branches of
     The barabumba trees.
(Their fruits taste like vanilla fudge
     Plus Gorgonzola cheese.)

Zinc took five thousand shots of her,
     In every purple pose:
While running, leaping, looking at
     A rabbit or a rose,
While resting, as she washed her face
     Or licked between her toes.

(The photos would have been superb.
     But on the very day
We got there, as we all unpacked,
     Zinc found, to his dismay,
That he had brought no film along:
     He’d left it in L.A.)

The summer slowly ended; we
     Were halfway into fall
With our supply of gumdrops getting
     Dangerously small.
We knew we had to take the first
     Free hippo to Bengal,

Then transfer out to Bangalore.
     We waved a sad goodbye
To our dear tiger. All of us
     Were struggling not to sigh,
Especially Professor M
     And Zinc and Muggs. And I —

Well, I do miss her...yes, sometimes
     So much that I could weep.
I think about her every day
     And as I fall asleep
I see her purple smile among
     The lemon-yellow sheep.

Yet somehow I keep wondering if
     She’s not the very last.
The future is more flexible,
     More marvelous and vast,
Than we can ever really know.
     (We only know the past.)

What if, in deepest India,
     Beside the River J...
What if, in that dark forestland
     So many miles away,
She met another of her kind
     One ordinary day?

Her mate! Her very own! A male
     As beautiful as her!
She gazes at his shining eyes,
     His long, soft, purple fur.
And then she slowly walks to him
     And both begin to purr.

What if...? What if...? And then, someday,
     A little tigeroo,
A tiny purple ball of fluff.
     Or maybe even two.
Or three or four. It’s possible.
     I know it is. Do you?