Sometimes they’re gathered, racks above
the fence line, sometimes far back
on the hill, feeding or dozing or watching
the air’s silence, unbroken by you or
your idling car. Sometimes you get out,
tell the kids to look, elk, here. Like deer,
only fed, fatter. Dutifully, the kids stand,
waiting for action. You hope the old
life, the spiked rages, bull roars,
the violence we come from, is at least
intimated by these astonishing, branching
growths, but the small herd wanders
off, the kids hang on the fence for fun,
beg for ice cream, and you, being now
among the docile, after, Lord, those
unspeakable years, say yes, okay, yes,
let us be happy, let the apocalypse come,
let the last moments be of ice cream
with multicolored sprinkles, let the elk
wake up with their hooves, lower their
velvet trees and bugle for all they’re worth,
a regular Disney movie, nobody gets hurt.