OUR MYTHS ARE IN THE MOSSES

I was feeling like a scarecrow 

overstuffed with brittle, tasteless fluff 

and topped off to the gag reflex with whatever this bitter drink is I’ve been binging 

so I take in the sacrament of a red red steak 

and go out to walk the blood back into my veins. 

I walk with a friend 

Into dark green woods 

We talk about the room where people sit before we’re reborn 

You know, the one made mostly of light. 

He takes a photo of me looking straight into the sun

And I’m warm.

We crash clumsy through a balsam thicket

Using careless voices for such a careful place 

and we jump a big fat doe. 

We pause to watch her streak away to the East Moments later we hear a shot.

I go back the next day, alone 

To sink a little deeper 

sit a little longer

To ask the moss to soak up all the noise I’ve made

I find in my path a fallen branch 

Shaped like a fork horned buck 

And I’ve got my gun today

so I say OK I’m ready.

I walk how a buck might walk 

Cutting across the wind

It’s stories rushing through me

I grunt and turn the earth with a hoof 

Scraping my own story there in the soil

I bed downwind in the brown leaves 

And wait 

Beech trees hold themselves together much more gracefully than me 

I try to wind my limbs around myself like that 

But find I’ll need to grow another hundred years

Fine

I’ve got time

I hear something fizzing in the ground all around

Like I’m sitting on a hive of bees 

like power lines - like a first date buzz 

It takes me a few minutes to focus my eyes and see the springtails so small 

Popping around in the papery leaves 

Of course

Silence is just us ignoring the roaring always underfoot 

I remember the myth of the hunter 

The one I just started writing

Right now 

The girl who’d had her fill of one world 

So she looked in the pines for another 

The jays huffed and puffed at her 

Blue as a dying propane flame 

The squirrels screamed their machine gun screams 

But it wasn’t as bad as the mean mean masses 

She’d never even met

she wove a tunic out of twigs 

wrapped a birds nest in her hair

Wore a serpent round her wrist 

to sniff the wind 

She chewed a wad of wintergreen 

to mask her meaty breath 

She groaned like a swaying Pine 

And all was quiet 

She learned to cry so like a doe

in heat 

That the coyotes circle in, chirping.

She sat under a tree and heard voices from the west 

laughing 

twigs snapping 

and then closer

the pounding of hooves. 

She raised her rifle

A wand of earthly goods

metals, wood, and fire.

And shot the doe through the heart 

The moment she stretched her movie star neck, collarbone, shoulder, thigh

From behind the emerald curtain 

She slipped off the golden robe 

And forever wore it as her own 

she swallowed her flesh 

from ankle to nose 

She thought 

It’s good to be home 

While she washed it all down 

with milk warm from the teat 

And left on the ground 

the black waxy hooves 

for mice and mushrooms to eat 

She turned the bones into buttons 

The fat into soap 

and plucked a snow-white hair from the tail

to float a silver hook 

to catch a speckled trout.

Every spring she listens 

for the lost and orphaned fawns 

Bleating helpless through the hills 

And she nurses them in the greening valley grass

Until they’ve drunk enough to run.