(in memory, John Sullivan)

To see a moose

requires off handed luck,

a patience of dawns

and dusks. It requires

keeping a distance,

a kind of respect,

the season of the logans’

long grasses thickening,

Spring’s first hatch

propelling itself

from mud to air,

awkward legged,

until it’s a kingdom of bug

swarm. Casual as a god,

one steps out

from the darkening firs,

from that low lying cool

of conifer floor.

He’s young,

his rack, stubs

of furred velvet.

He’s here for the glut

of soupy weeds.

I stay until he feeds—

and is a darker shadow

within the dark, drifting back

to the black trees.

Not all loneliness is bereft.

That night in my dream blueberries edged

the lake through which my gentle,

unhurried relatives rowed

themselves back to me.

My uncle grinned a greeting.

The song in the dream

became the lake, the reflection of each leaf,

a prophesy of flocked trees, holy particularities.