If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down....

Paul and I are at the Marconi Center, a coastal conference place just north of Point Reyes, on the incredible coast about an hour from San Francisco. The grounds -- which smell like eucalyptus, conifers, moss and rosemary-- are very dark at night, and we were walking up a steepish dark trail after the reading last night with two women we didn't know, participants in the conference. Somebody mentioned mountain lions, and we cheerfully recounted the story we'd head from a local fellow, who a few years back was walking in the middle of the day in the golden grasses up on the mountain above the dining hall when he saw such a creature stalking through the grass. He talked about how struck he was by the animal's movement, and I thought how much I'd love to see such a thing, even if were in the dark on the way back to our room. The women grew quiet after we told this story, and I admit that I found myself taking boyish pleasure in scaring them just a iittle with the idea of beastly proximity. I am afraid of various things, but mountain lions are not one of then, and I found myself quoting Jack Gibert's brilliant poem "A Brief for the Defense": "if the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should be grateful that our end had magnitude." I know there's a certain bravura jokiness in that sentence, but I also think I would rather be eaten by a cougar than, say, be devoured by an English Department. My companions did not see either the humor in this or the allure of magnitude, at least not at that moment on the dark path. And needless to say I don't really WANT to be eaten by a mountain lion. Not very much.