We shuffled around in the red sand, looking for debitage,
The chert and obsidian flakes among the piñon and juniper
And old hearths, stray beer tabs, some broken glass and shotgun shells,
Horse dung moldering under some trees, cow patties under others,
The shoulder spine of a long-dead doe, rather small to have been shot.
Across the canyon, a sheep trailer and a cowboy cabin, more mesa,
And beyond that, Hurricane Mesa with its sixty-year old supersonic
Flying monkey rocket sled launch testing site, now privately owned.
Keep Out. I could not for the life of me figure out the distortions
In the doe's twisted fragment of spine that made her bones monstrous
To me as mine would be to anyone other who found them this way,
In the detritus of passing strategies. Her back looked like a fanged tail,
A tiny dragonling. Remember how the Greeks repaid the Seleucid king
For his marvelous gift of real tigers by returning him the nonexistent,
Nonsense monster, the trugeranos? The world is all one
Such a monster to me, such a monster to the world. Poor doe.
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