Restlessness and Silence

Did you find
your heart
on that nervous

road in the Teton darkness?

Did you find
what you were looking for?

Did you experience
The Queen

and her cub with the burning face?

Did you hear
her tiny screams
when the metal hit the bone?

         Did you find your way back home?

Whiteface

You came here
because your heart
was fallen rock.

I never wanted to hurt you.

You came here
because we are drawn
into the nervous animal.

I never wanted to hurt you.

You came here
because nature was something
you thought you needed to find.

I never wanted to hurt you.

Fractured Spaces

The roadside bear

and her cub walk along

a highway

through sagebrush and pine.

She is protecting her cub

from being eaten

by male grizzlies

and so she stays close to the road.

She is known

Around the world as 399,

The Queen of the Tetons.

*

A family of five

Leaps out of an SUV

With binoculars

And smart phones.

There are cars speeding

Over the plains

and a mother

grabs her daughter by the arm.

They say there is an aura

around a grizzly,

know around the world.

Children of the Sage

Crickets rise

to the tops of sagebrush—

project light into darkful mind.

In this texture of night,

children are drawn

into maps of sound.

Like bats in the shadow-scrub,

they turn their ears to the plains

and travel cryptic sky.

And

I poke

       my vestigial

eye

   socket

into moments of leg.

The elk is

        sudden.

I

am

       really
                     looking
         for
                                       (for sudden)
                   
                                          cryptids.

The Animals

When a crow shifts

into the shoulder

of a pine, 

are you drawn

into the mythology 

of dead spaces?

Does it help 

to hug a dog when 

your heart darkens into cryptic sky?

Have you ever consider 

shifting your embrace

into the attention of a star?

             

       Have you ever hugged a bird?

I am trying to uncover
the cryptic

magic of rabbits.

Astralopithecus

If we could change
our eyes,

the eyes of an animal,
points of light

is all we'd see--
an ape-glitter in the dismal-black.

Love

Everyone wants
to be loved

and this is why
everyone is trying to kill me.

Cats

I mostly
don't trust people.

This is why
I have become a cat.