The Tiger Who Stayed

My father hung you in the evening light,
Where the faded orange turned to gold.
No one knew the hand that shaped you,
Or the first house you called home.
You had worried eyes and crooked whiskers,
A solemn little downward mouth,
Like you carried some old question
No one ever figured out.

Still you watched the rooms grow older,
Every leaving, every return.
You kept quiet through the laughter,
You kept watch through every turn.

You were the tiger who stayed
When the years carried everything away,
With your worried eyes and your crooked grace,
Keeping watch on the family place.
No name, no maker, no story engraved,
No answer for the mystery you gave.
Only the heart my father recognized,
And the tiger who stayed by our side.

Since sixty-nine, or longer perhaps,
You have waited inside that frame,
While the children became the elders,
And the elders became their names.
You saw birthdays at the table,
Winter coats beside the door,
Boxes packed and houses emptied,
Then another room once more.

Every wall became your kingdom,
Every house became your own.
You were never just a picture.
You were proof that we were home.

You were the tiger who stayed
When the years carried everything away,
With your worried eyes and your crooked grace,
Keeping watch on the family place.
No name, no maker, no story engraved,
No answer for the mystery you gave.
Only the heart my father recognized,
And the tiger who stayed by our side.

My father saw something within you
That the rest of us learned in time,
Not the strength of teeth or thunder,
But a gentler, stranger kind.
You looked frightened and forgiving,
Half a guardian, half a child,
With a body built for legend
And a face too soft for wild.

Maybe love is what we carry
Without knowing where it starts.
Maybe things become immortal
When they live inside our hearts.

So I sent you through a hundred worlds,
Through ink and fire, silk and stone.
Kings adorned you, cities burned,
Still every face remained your own.
You stood beneath the bending pine tree,
You rose in color, smoke, and flame.
Every master changed the language,
But no hand could change your gaze.
You wore gold beneath a royal arch,
You walked through gardens bright and strange.
You became a dream, a warning,
Yet your worried heart remained.
And every road through distant centuries
Led back through memory to that wall,
To the strange old friend my father loved,
Who had been there through it all.

You are the tiger who stayed
When the years carried so much away,
With your worried eyes and your crooked grace,
Still keeping watch on the family place.
No name, no maker, no story engraved,
Yet more of our history than words ever saved.
You hold the light that my father once knew,
And now all of us can see it in you.
You are the tiger who stayed,
Through every loss and every change,
Through every room and every frame,
Still looking back at us the same.
And long after voices have softened and faded,
Long after the rooms have been emptied and changed,
You will carry the love that our family made,
Our beautiful tiger who stayed.

Keep your question in those wide dark eyes.
Keep the old rooms safe inside.
No name, no maker, no need to explain.
Just stay, old tiger.
Stay.