The last lion in Pennsylvania

was never found. Black-&-yellow beetles smuggled her underground; trees took her up. Her ears became— among other things—leaves, & her roar was reborn in the tops of tall pines. She ran in the sap. But she traveled, too, into the ravenous stomachs of the deer, who were no longer the wary creatures she used to stalk. Through them, she explored a growing emptiness, a desert with trees…