On a long walk over the mountain you’d hear

them first, the pang and chorus

of their exultations, as though you’d strayed

out of Hawthorne into Cotton Mather—

such joyous remorse, such cranky raptures.

And you’d love their fundamental squawking,

little Pentacostal magpies, diminutive

raven priests. You’d walk into their circle

like a drag queen into a Texas truckstop—

silence first, then the caterwauls, the righteous gacks.

Someone’s gutted out a deer is all.

In the late autumn snow you’d see the deacons’

tracks—ursine, feline, canine—sweet eucharist of luck

and opportunity for them all. Take and eat,

clank the birds, but not too much. It might be a while.

.

You’d wonder, yes you would,

and maybe nudge with the toe of your boot

the seeming rigidity of the severed esophagus,

gently belled, like a deaf man’s antique horn,

and the breathless lungs subsiding to carnate blood.

You’d want to go, but you’d want to stay;

you’d want a way to say your part in the service

going on: through high windows

the nothing light, the fourteen stations

of the clouds, the offertory of snow.