Second of three encounters with lions

When I was about 32
I was climbing around Neil Rock
In cutoff jeans & tennis shoes
& the rest of me a poor example of Tarzan
As I was on that hot day
& I heard this same
Guttural coughing noise
coming from the manzanita patch atop
Neil Rock as I was standing on the
Cliff where 100 feet below me were
Two does with fawns & a wind current blowing
Straight up the cliff face & just
Earlier held up a golden eagle w/in thirty feet
On a float by, now I was high as the rock faced cliff
But I knew what the coughing noise was
& when I knew—hair stood up on the back of my neck
I had no mean border collie & I knew I
Was meat that had messed up
A lions meat hunt & the guttural noise continued
& admittedly scared, I momentarily went into a flight mode
& making it about 15 feet I saw a huge
Dead manzanita trunk & grabbed it
& began to beat the dead wood off it for
A twice sized baseball bat & turned toward
The brush & could now see
His tawny cat body in the brush tail twitching
Sizing me up & I struck the ground
Repeatedly &now in full fight mode I spoke
To the mountain lion, “Come on,” I yelled,
& other bravado I do not recall,
& yet the big cat lingered perhaps finding my expletives curious,
& he did slink away, & I sauntered down the hill
& deposited my manzanita cat killer, behind the front door
In my cabin down the hill, after I’d walked off
The adrenaline & later I told my neighbor this tale
That he did not believe
& I think he did not doubt me so much,
As his urban, “moved to the country..”
Presentiment, foolishly doubted that anything wild & fierce
Could be close enough to watch their every move, while they
Jogged & walked through this forest.