Sunday, October 21, 2007

Tropic of Cancer

Going up a mountain in the Absarokas,
making for the unlikely event
of shade. Scattered there
on the ground, a halo
of orange butterflies, maybe four dozen
amber wing-pairs,
tatted over in black and white, attached
to velvet bodies, tiny black legs
trembling, like hands of broken watches
drawing minutes down
to no time at all, there to siphon
snowmelt from puddles filling
the tracks of a passing bear, a grizzly
from the looks of it, if those terrible
claws & the mud closing in
are any sign.

What are these denizens
of Mexico doing a thousand miles
wide of their regular migrations
way up in the aspens & sage
of Wyoming?
A jaguar stretched thin
as paper
borne aloft & torn apart
by high winds,
coming to rest,
antennae searching for scattered remains,
feeling for the slightest trace
of the jaguar's pulse,
haloed there so close,
so far from their soft beds
in the leaf-shade
of the Sierra Madre.

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