A PLACE FOR ME TO SPLIT MY SKULL

Enameled, polished canines concealed by tight lips and porous flesh.

Slow breath.

Heavy and clambering, my strange, filthy feet labor with tender souls.

I am comically unsure of this foreign strata.

I grope to grasp the sharp unforgiving shale.

Rocks dumb with wisdom, sage silent memory that refuses to move or be named.

Four feet, two feet, four again.

I shift my cumbersome cryptic shape while the fur, feather, claw, ear and beak chide the awkward and unwelcome.

A shrill and primal STOP! STOP! HALT! MEEP!

The trill army unites.

I recognize you, yet, I am much more than twice removed.

I am fleeting, struggling—grappling to be present, to be aware.

Not you.

You are innate and so firmly here, aren't you?

Confident in your role and pelt. Belonging, existing.

My eyes are placed squarely in front. (The better to see you with).

Scanning, shifting, focusing on the brevity of your sly dart and dodge.

In and out of this devastation you nest and occupy home.

Hidden, a riddle of routes, a labyrinth and refuge.

A place for me to split my skull and snap my ankles.

I cannot smell you or catch you.

I have no plan for your meat.

My nose is filled with my own scent/stink masked with chemicals that you detected a mile away.

I gave you a head start while trying not to offend my kind and clan.

My time is so brief on many levels…although, maybe not as fleeting as yours.

I'll never be as productive or familiar as you.

This is my dilemma, not yours.

As I glance at my cheap, plastic watch on my porous flesh and think in a trill indoor voice STOP! STOP! STOP!

Then smirk to myself and sneer at the rocks as I descend.

—Wendy Given

Signal Fire
Alpenglow Backpacking Trip
Mt Hood, Oregon
August 2013