Page 3
Primeval, the moose plows through thick foliage,
poses for flash cameras,
disdainful dusk hobnobbing in the thickets
until I’m dripping with dark fear that the moose might
rush toward my direction,
robust rack blooming from his head.
I remind myself it isn’t rutting season,
recall stories of how bulls sometimes lock horns,
starve to death, their struggle broken into strange sculpture.
My cousin Bobby has brought me to these
forsaken parts: Norton, Cannon,
Vermont , and into Pittsburg , New Hampshire ;
the best wallows spiked with road salt and bedded by creatures
so fearful their molted names escape me.
I’m not afraid , I mumble underbreath, while the camera
catches and holds what quickly becomes the past,
mired in memory—its salt so subtle
one hardly tastes the inevitable.
“Duck if one smashes through the windshield,”
Bob says, quoting Vermont ’s moose casualties.
A direct hit totals everything, one cow darting
so quickly across our plumed headlights
we can’t accurately track its ellipses of movement.
It isn’t yet rutting season. Those words cling
to my tongue as though they might bless me,
protect me from this dark I wallow in,
fearful to leave, yet reluctant to remain.