Choose to believe in an indigo bunting’s wings
feathers dipped, drenched in turquoise ink
perched on a wire, swishing tail to release 
some flag of hope for the widow struggling to fill 
the feeder with nyjer seed. 

Refuse to understand color as light diffraction
feather structure staged to showcase only blue 
wave lengths
Let them be blue through and through
Let the bird guzzle blue pea vine tea
Let him feast on the flesh of codlings
Let him fly high over fresh lakes and salty
beryl sea
Let him move beyond superman skies.

All night he will find his necessary constellations
stars gleaming like Lite Brite pegs punched
through heavy paper
shaping some mythical  creature
Let him be the bird of the hour
bird of the week
where where 
here here
see him  see him
sweet sweet.
                        

Her first horse was 
a late gelding.
Thrown to the ground
prone, put fully under.
But he retained each private
pain. The muscle memory
of legs bound, his power to kick
and canter held hostage.  
That forced submission was
worse than  the trauma of 
open castration.

For weeks she walked him
in hand. Since she was 
slight and had not grown
into her features, the fresh 
gelding allowed her closeness
and care. When she mounted him 
and pressed her legs to his withers 
she forgot her need for
human praise. She forgot 
all rules around the normal 
progression—walk, trot, canter 
gallop. She led her horse to high 
water. She did not make him drink.
                        

DNR believes at least two male cougars have been wandering Wisconsin since 
August, before that no confirmed sightings since the turn of the century.
Ripon, WI Commonwealth Press January 2018

Each whisper of ditch-weed, each 
passing shadow from leaves is the 
movement under stillness before the cougar 
leaps. He is packaged in power while 
you’ve run yourself weak.You are scrawny 
and anemic to his plush, tawny, sleek. You run 
with some blessing of Boston, chase an
undeserved grace, the rhythmic sound
of your minimal shoes, laced over porous
fractured feet.  He bounds through the Western 
Hemisphere, scraping soil and snow
with secret codes.  You repeat random 
advice that’s been offered:
never turn your back,
look larger, 
sound louder,
be filled with some primal, cellular power. 
Resist the urge to run.
Since you carry no pack and wear no coat
let down your long hair.  
Shake out your matted tangles then
stare into his amber eyes. 
Chant his preferred prey in lieu of prayer—
mice, marmot, hare, fawn, 
raccoon, yearling-bear.  
Become zen but do not crouch down.  
Lower your heart rate,
slow your breath and hope to flow under 
before he pulls apart rows of slow-twitch 
muscles you have nurtured for races with 
recovery protein and water bottles, placed 
in the crotch of tree branches. Know he will 
bury your hundred pound carcass in the 
exhausted sepia acre behind the farmer’s 
fieldstone border. Your marathon training 
will sustain him, give him strength 
to find his screaming in-estrus mate.