Erin Pesut

citizen of the woods

Our friend the tracker can tell what happened 
by looking at the prints in the snow.

You can tell if a rabbit is calm or anxious, 
you can tell if a coyote is in a hurry or being 

followed by a female. He told us over loaded
nachos in our kitchen how a print keeps the weather, 

sinking in rain, expanding in melt, locked solid in ice. 
Follow them long enough and you may even see them cross, 

a marvelous meeting of the species.

But he wasn't there when we found the kill site, 
tufts of hair in the snow outnumbering the pine needles 

that fell when it rained. red where the coyote's teeth sank into
the deer's heart. we tracked the dragging, the piecing apart 

to where the spine was picked clean in a clearing. a rib.
a mandible (purple-lit) tossed off to the side.

we found the shit, bullet-like and dark, when the deer knew 
its flame might go out. In my head I called it murder.

I meant nature.
We were in a quiet wood. 

But hadn’t he said something else? One day he found
where a bobcat had bed down in the snow. It was all imprint.

He mapped it with his hands, the haunches, the muscles. 
Using only his palm he felt how relaxed the bobcat had been

there in the sun. 

Back to Issue XI…