5th Wall

If you lay on
your back the ceiling

is a wall.

Look at all the animals.

Alpha Female

She peaked out

of the pines,

head like a triangle.

Ancient triangle.

Wolves

There
are people

who live in the woods.

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.