When summer's slumber gives way
to a first prick of autumn breeze,
I'm always carried to the hunt—
The click of shotguns and earthy smell of mink-oiled boots, dogs clattering in thick tack and my orange vest bulging brash shells,
Mom's toffee, and still-warm pheasants.
Montana is mythology to me,
drums of eternity throbbing out
stories above mountains, a big sky
full of reminders. Antelope move
like caramel wind over the prairies,
hooves grappling like a prayer over
the rugged ridges of the world.
Air perfumed by campfire smoke drugs me like some incense of violins
long forgotten from my early manhood
when love flared virgin in my heart and I had no idea what it was: some emotion
of reddish clouds electrifying the horizon,
a whiskey moon dangling over buttes
like a girl's pearl earring.
In this season the river bottom trees are shorn of leaves and axed by light into shadow and the insistent generosity of a star angling through harvest atmosphere.
A sphere of silence grows as fractal branches
elevate in circling wonder, a coherence
of worship behind all hymns.
I know so much less these days, and am so much more peaceful. What I know I know, and much of it I learned without knowing, hunting myself
under ashen autumn skies, gun in hand
and seeds of a love inside shooting
backward into song.