And of moose, speak no more the brawn,
the blunder, the old oaf-of-the-woods
with the glum dumb glare and oversized rack
galumphing through the swamp toward his supposed telos ---
to be fixed in final moositude above some fireplace.
Not that.
Write instead this delicate huge
reticulated hind leg lifted---sandhill crane
crossed with industrial crane---over the fallen
log, held there like a hieroglyph then,
knee and hip unlevering, slowly
lowered. All the while his head, five yards away,
browses the bottom:



adrift, paddle in the air:
nearby
among the reeds a she-moose
feeding:
droplets---this,
this, this, this---
ellipses
dripping into no-name lake.


-- from The Muskwa Assemblage, by Don McKay.

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