FAIRY TALES FOR TERRIFIED CHILDREN

Pedro Hoffmeister

The decomposing loam is a smell so strong

—after the rain—it’s almost a taste in my mouth,

mixing with long-eared sage and juniper,

not berrying but sticky, resinous,

pinecones of Ponderosas falling

through the trees like squirrels who’ve

lost their branches. I’ve lost my branches

as well, but I hesitate to talk about it,

nervous to admit, “My brain’s not

what it used to be.” Instead, I walk out

past the last volcanic boulder, where

a patch of trees were struck by lightning

a few years ago, and their burned,

hollow skeletons remain riddled,

wind-smoothed black holes.

Under my feet, cryptobiotics

break in pans of dirt, spaces

between trees, bitterbrush

shading the ground, where I find

a coyote kill, mule deer pulled down,

torn apart, the deer’s antlers turned

into the soil like it was fighting the earth.

I don’t know how it feels to be encircled

by a pack, but I do know something about enemies

advancing from my blindside, what it means

to step away from my life, or to have

my life step away from me, to see

the black-burned trees of my past, truth that even

new growth will not be the same as the old.

I know the difficulty of being an animal,

of being a human, rain washing the bones

coming up through the wildflowers,

sun-bleached spine, scapula like a wide, flat spoon,

ribs that remind me of tines on pitchforks carried

by villagers, humans hiking through forests

in search of monsters.