the elk wake me. Cold morning, early fire.
As if the world should be beautiful here, now,
cloud bank portending not snow
but the glaze of cow fences, my finger burn of cold.
Amid the world burning, amid its razing,
this moment’s abyss turns me back to naked trees in white sunlight.
How can I speak this in another way?
Flute, piccolo, wild coyote din: other worldly
the elk blend into the dim fields, and I see them
as I want: full racked, prow-necked, their breath like pillows
of steam. And now, this heart pins itself to the snowy egrets
I found in a morning river drifting long from here,
all the darkness I spilled into the water still
summer green with its snow of flotsam, the cottonwood
calling out their abundance.
Do you hear them in the river light?
Let there be gold in white feathers, let
there be moments we wake up out of our silence
like now: the elk in song they teach us, the gully just below.
