They made it up one morning
to keep the money busy
and kill everyone else
I lean against the gas station wall
a few miles outside Yellowstone
sketching a stranger’s face
under the dirty skillet of night
What will save me is the taste of miles
killed with the wheel of blank stars
with alone sound of struck string
on the dead highway
I’m working mink oil into my boots
mountain lions drag elk to the cabin door
The old man we pick up in Browning
coughs diesel and range
Snow blocks us from fishing the reservoir
wiper blade waving as if to flag us down
A dog pisses on my tackle box at the Conoco
The guide who leads us here
catches fish like a covenant he’s entered into
Will such mastery save me It doesn’t him
Halfway up another river the Lostine
trout lacquer over calico stone
Early sparrow calls us together
into the tent which I zip up in one motion
The yearling sets deer-heel
down in payment on flattest moss
Like any river its job is to take away
A friend’s son dies
A week in their house full and desolate
opens a room inside me
throws open slams the door
Outside the battlefield garden’s left to nettle
bone-white trellis an old-time tragedian
The roof is molting
The porch is wolving
In the garage I find no rake
only the animal we’ve been hunting and avoiding
still in the bat’s tooth of its cage
from Poetry Northwest 05.2 Fall & Winter 2010 & 2011More by Ed Skoog from the library
Copyright © Ed Skoog
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.