Emma Hine “I Wake Up In the Painting by Rousseau”

                            This time 
he, the sleeping figure, I, the lion, 
my pupils round in their egg-whites, 
                       night-wind 

                            angling his scent
dunewards. He has surprised me. 
I never expected a human in the sand 
                       like a god fallen 	

                            asleep,
a bare-throated mandolin on the pillow 
beside him. I smell the striped shoulder
                       of his robe.

	                    Don’t know
which path he took across the desert.
On the nightstand we keep a lamp, 
                       a vase, 

                            a digital clock.
Beneath the blue walls I hold the moon
in my teeth and breathe on it, feel no
		       devouring dread.