Nancy: Alive they surprise us, arouse the dogs, astonish with their size and otherness. Packaged they may mean winter meat, a badge of prowess, even a lucky roadkill – or generosity. I understand and yet feel puzzled.
These Gifts Of Moose
The smell in the thicket
barnlike
oddly domestic
Loose limbed
long strides
unhurried
between the cabin and the grass
We measure with our hands
prints
down to the edge of the tide;
across the bay
the alders shake and close
But this, too
a knock a gift a thankyou
a quick shy handshake
Moose? this, these packages?
Moose?
Alan: And who would the monk be, if he could choose?
Monk In A Vat
Mornings like this,
I would be a monk
abiding in an old whiskey vat
settled deep in the redwoods
of northern California,
spending days heavy with moisture
muffling all sound of people, machines
in samadhi, attending to mist
dripping from shingled eaves,
watching through the half-round doorway
the small local animals,
their careful routines.
(Warmed by a wrapped ember,
he sits in full lotus, or rises stiffly
to stroll among the immense furred boles,
face impassive as bark, robes mottled as lichens,
recollecting the day’s visitors, a writer and photographer
who will make of his life and his dwelling
something so wished-for, so acute
in the pages of some glossy
it will seem like the tree of heaven itself
to at least one being
gulping coffee, a bite before work
on a morning like this.)
