Second Steps

Organs.  This time of month, women join together, rub geranium oil on open sores.  Massaging away pain.  Gather floral crowns, and dance among moonbeams. Biological parts removed, alien scars leave trace evidence of possession (no longer possessed.)  A five pronged, succulent mouth, latched, sucking garbage.  Tick-tock.  Tick-tock.

Bear Feeding.  Worms stretching from warm underground burrows feast.  Mother tosses apples down the hill, doesn’t want bears to go hungry come winter.  Cats are fair game for coyotes.  She doesn’t understand. Apples bring the hungry.

 Dust.  A fine dust of purple grazes the space between sky and mountains.  Faces reside there. Floating until morning, washing land.  Sitting on the couch, last night’s coals still hot, wood turned to ash.  Someone should have put it out.

Bridge.  The trees have been cleared away, tires removed.  The crick more of a stream.  A bridge to nowhere.  Sign: Turn Around, Don’t Drown.  Cross anyway.  A dead bird. A bad omen.  More dock than bridge.  It does not connect, simply ends. Turn Around, Don’t Drown.

Poaching.  The Ranger tells me about a cooler, stores dead animal carcasses, proof of crimes committed, violations to body.  Headless deer, elk, moose, antlers severed from vacated skulls. Whole mountain lions, bobcats, waiting to be examined, tissues holding evidence of destruction.  Captured alive, dead, part, whole, mount on a wall, kept encaged.  Doomed either way.                                                       

I ask about culling to make room for survival.  The Ranger says, “Sometimes you have to kill the baby.”  Shots of progesterone trick the body into pregnancy.  Cows fashion dens from trees and grass, waiting for calving

Hybridity.  A wolf-dog found, collar too tight around its neck.  Will have to be re-homed, a sanctuary or preserve somewhere, too wild to become someone’s pet.  The Ranger attempts a catch, neck slips the noose, another toss. Needs to be caught, secretly hoping it can outsmart the Ranger, find somewhere to hide.  Cubs may be waiting, a pack. A dart gun finally subdues the thing.