The vultures are a syntax of erasures, shadows
stripping the deer’s body down to a crooked
temple of bones. The poppies are out here
getting away with murder because they know
beauty is its own camouflage. Why build
a campfire at sunset? Can’t you see the sky is
bright and awake? Live, and hunt, and pray
and leave only footprints. The mountain splits
the belly of the cloud, but it heals the injury
as it moves. I talk to myself, and I dance alone
because it’s happier that way. The high desert
is quiet today except for a few raving prophets
and wild horses. I want God’s vision of home
for me, but that might be my own body. Stones
slip on their slow moss sweaters. I hear water
but can’t see it. I find a bear’s tracks but never
meet it. The rainbow is behind me with its promises.
Where is the future today? I walk another circle.
I am made new and still myself. Crickets announce
the night even before the moon decides to rise,
the early stars already arriving to warm up for
their choreography of stillness. The cleaned ribs
reach for an old idea of heaven. A vulture flies
the deer’s heart into the empty arms of a tree.
—
Traci Brimhall is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and others. She’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Park Service, and the Academy of American Poets. She is the current Poet Laureate of Kansas.
