Something ungulate was slain somehow, stumbled
in the tangled brome and popped a knee, tried climbing
higher ground to lick an entry wound too late,
run down by early hominids who’d come trampling through
the kill site, threatened, ill-fed. Or, untagged, unowned,
picked off by joyless locals from the road and left for dead.
Carcass gone, a pulse of nutrient for the soil, lying long
enough for bones to string a necklace in the overgrowth,
their own cairn, until we humped up the unfarmed ridge
and they detonated underfoot. What with my spurned
hips and joints, there’s no justifying stooping low,
near to fours, to investigate and learn, unclasp one pearl:
size a fist, heft a hand grenade. Now it haunches,
specimen on the desk, like a plaster counterfeit beside
the Zippo, a few ballpoints, and doesn’t do a thing
while I adjust the lumbar cant of my office chair.
There. That’s fine, as far as I’m concerned.