He also finds the wood and steel beautiful,

and the slickness with which all the moving parts

slide open and shut, lifting and lodging

into place the sleek, copper-clad,

steel-jacketed projectile, which, weighing less

than half an ounce, will cover, once

the trigger is pulled, the eighty yards to the doe

in the time it would take him to blink.

He aligns the cross-hairs of the scope

just behind her right shoulder, where the heart

pumps and the lungs, she being absolutely at ease

and grazing, exchange the same mountain air

he also breathes, though he breathes less easily,

since he hopes the single shot will kill her

cleanly and knows, even so, that

should such a clean kill be accomplished, still

he will mourn and be glad simultaneously and will

for the next hour or more be bathed in her blood

and intimate with the then-stilled machinery

of her living—the yards of guts, the probably full

bladder, the buttery liver, and more—nearly all

of which he will leave on the forest floor,

and all of which but the head of her will, he is certain,

be gone within two days, a blessing for the coyotes

and the black and white custodial birds. Even still

he has not yet squeezed the bullet free but breathes

with her to be free of her, allowing each breath

to elongate, allowing himself to see and to note

how the light snow that has been falling

all morning lands on her shoulders