Animals come down through stars to reach the valley. A coyote with its nose pressed in a rabbit hole. Two Sandhill cranes as tall as rain, and listening north. And when a cougar screams its human scream, I’m suddenly a child again, awake, the parched air raked by drumfire blasts, window panes all gleam and vast, animals angling through ripe alfalfa fields. My grandmother holding me to the thunder-headed sky as if I were an offering. Saying, There, see how meager we are made. How our bones ring with fury and light.
Copyright © 2019 Kathryn Hunt. This poem originally appeared in Poetry Northwest, Winter & Spring 2019. Used with permission of the author.