but removed them at night
and fell to the bottom of darkness
like crows without wings.
War was the perfect disguise.
Their mothers would not have known them,
and the swarming flies could not find them.
When they met a spirit in the forest
it thought they were bags of misfortune
and walked away
without taking their lives.
In this way,
they tricked the deer
that wandered into the forest at night,
thinking branches of trees
were other deer.
If I told you the deer was a hide
of light, you wouldn’t believe it,
or that it was a hunting song
that walked out of a diviner’s bag
sewn from human skin.
It knew it could pass
through the bodies of men and return.
It knew the arrow belonged to the bow,
and that men only think they are following
the deaths of animals
when they are walking
into the fire.
That’s why fire is restless
and smoke has become
the escaped wings of crows,
why war is only another skin,
and why men are just the pulled-back curve of the bow.