Moose Dreams

There are times when all the chutzpa I

can muster isn't enough, fug and bluster

all I can do, and damned if it doesn't

just stand there, legs straddling

a berm of washboard dust-ruts

and in late noon sun stare me

blue in the face: lord, we could almost

trade places, my back strained

by the weight of those great bone wings,

my tongue itching for lily root.

And musk, lord, the pheromones,

a day so sweet with elderberry's too rank

fume I could die twice over snuffing.

While the truck mumbles and a trout spanks

the cooler, I almost outdo myself.

But reason, that too-convenient shortcut,

creeps back, if only so far: the rest as we say

is silence, dust and the sputter of flies

and when lumbering to go it pauses

and throws me its last worst look

its sorrow is Christ's, dewlap

jeweled, a beatitude of moss.