PACK RATS

Up to the upper place to cover the bedstead against the pack rats.

The 10th of August and already they’re moving in.

Industrial plastic, waste product from logging companies.

Early winter. It won’t work,

                                                they’ll burrow in and nest,

Leaving their blood-colored urine and interminable excrement

Coming and going.

They’ll leave us something shining, or bright,

In return. Bright and shining.

This gray on blue on white on gray on blue

Montana August skyscape

Has nothing to do with politics, or human relations, or people, in fact.

It has to do with fictions,

                                             and where we place ourselves

Apart from the dread apart.

It has to do with what’s unidentifiable,

And where our seat is in it.

It has to do with what the pack rat leaves, what’s bright and shining.

Surrounded by half-forests and half-lives,

Surrounded by everything we have failed to do,

It is as though kumquats hung from the lodgepole pine trees.

Everything’s doubled—

                                           once it arrives and once it fades.

Angels, God bless them, rebound from the meadow, bruised gain,

I guess, from our stern world.

Back in the pittering dark of the pine trees,

                                                                           the rats

Are nosing for silver or gold, or whatever glints or shines.