Moon Over Lake Mineral Wells

It’s embarrassing, really, out of all proportion to the sky it swells in,
Fever dream of some early nineteenth-century landscape hack,
America, savage and glorious kingdom of viral enormity –

And me, had I been dabbed into their foreground
As pioneer pastiche, staring directly at thrilled viewers
With a square-jawed, half-bored expression, my eyes saying

This Frankenstein moon don’t scare me none, your doughty hero
On the prowl for the spotted leo-pard that growls its death songs,
Shambling herds of bears, clouds of geese spilling thunder,

Sporting my magnificent patterned buckram, work of fierce women,
Draped in shining skins of weasels, otters, foxes,
The heads still intact, small eyes closed in honey-sweet dreams

Of the vast Eden where they once frolicked, my hunting prowess
Evident in the long rifle I hold like a wife, the knife for closer work
Glinting in my belt, moonlight glutting over me –

Now leaning on a picnic table, awaking from confusion
Of the brightness and the hour, watching a drunk giant
Blunder up heaven’s crooked ladder,

Trailing traces of tomorrow. On the pitiful island
In the lake’s center, geese carry on their conversation
As if it were the middle of the day, chatting easily,

Occasionally louder in argument, and the distant coyote choirs -
Always urgent, always far enough to sound sad.
If they’re discussing this absurd moon I wouldn’t know;

Even in English it would still be feathers and fur,
The myths of wild animals, their unknowable witness,
And I’m too near sleeping to scroll some rote human answer –

These legends unfolding above and around me,
Eavesdropping in vain to squawked and howled secrets,
Halfway from dream in the mirrored light of a star.