—|—Did the fog smell sweet like dripping fruit?

—|—Did the call of the wolf quiet the children or did they echo its good company? And the prairie dogs, did they sing?

—|—Did the flat grey sky draw you back inside to the heat in the muscle of his shoulder?

—|—Did you wake in the morning with ritual?

—|—Did the smooth mounds of the hills, red tips in relief, remind you of her nipples, erect and alive in your mouth?

—|—Did the sun in the morning along the horizon recall the spray of intent in the burst of a flower?

—|—Did you remember the paint of stretch-marks along the belly of your mother? Did you have a name for this color?

—|—Did you have a name for the light that slipped behind the eye of the moon?

—|—Did the sagebrush grow as plentiful? Did you find its old fingers in the folds of your child’s skirt buried deep like a secret?

—|—Did the bear in the hills call itself one name, then retreat to the mountains by another?

—|—Did each creek have a name?

—|—Did you find the folds of the grasses something to admire, that caught your attention when the mind was uncluttered?

—|—Did you find your mind cluttered?

—|—Did you have a name for each gesture of sky?

—|—Did the names you were given honor you?

—|—Did the dreaming prepare you?

—|—Did you try to warn us?

||—||Was the land as treeless, as wind-formed, as warm?

||—||Was there a name for the crows as they thundered past? Two lovers, the ravens: did you know we would poison the animals later?

||—||Was there constant drone of traffic: ground-ridden, sky-blasted? And what of the invisible cunning waves through the body?

||—||Was there cancer? Disease? Or did everyone grow old, even those left behind in the dark of the freeze?

||—||Were there ticks? Chronic wasting disease?

||—||Were there secrets?

||—||Was the sound of your bow faster than wind?

||—||Was the wild white flag in the flee of the deer as common, as erupted?

||—||Was your love-making freer under watch of the bear?

||—||Were you safe in the place of sandstone and tower, before a red road slashed the hidden into view?

||—||Was there a name for the object they placed in your hands, as cool and thin and white as spring ice suspended in a turn of the land?

||—||Was there a name for the branches strung with tight tension; for the land drawn and quartered?

||—||Was the arrival seen in your dreams?

||—||Was the land in which you were cornered familiar to you?

||—||Was there a guide in the metaphor if you lost sight of the way?

||—||Was the evening closed with ritual?

||—||Was the naming they gave you what you were meant to be called?

||—||Was murder worse or the word former?

||—||Were we warned?