You trace this field for pheasants—lavish
feathers with saturnine rings—blending
together in a bleary dawn. Your concentration
is telling as I decide, at ten, that the hunt
is a farce. A low, red sky portends reddening birds,
an exhausted German shorthair, a sore cartridge.
Death remains silent while bird after bird
drops in the gulf between us, the air becoming gelatinous.
Having left skinny bicycles for switch grasses,
there is the desire to drift among clover,
thistle, and tackweed. Is your goal to remain
here, unprotected, like an antler against the sky?
I wage my eyes and teeth, gamble my preteen
manhood against perseverance, grit. How strident
I am in this wind, its knuckles raking my clenched jaw.
