Moose Dreams

Leslie, my older daughter, is a bit of addle about moose. In a week in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons we looked and looked for moose, got up at 5:00 a.m. to search reported feeding grounds. On the last day finally saw one -- young, no antlers but sizable and imperturbable.

Reading a back issue of Poetry I came upon this poem by William Johnson:

Moose Deams

There are times when all the chutzpa I
can muster isn't enough, guf 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 roots.
And musk, lord, the pheromones,
a day so sweet with elderberry's too rank
fume. I could die twice over snuffling.
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 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.