Elegy 2.0

I found you on a cold California beach.

Just past Santa Cruz,

still a ways away from Half Moon Bay.

You were hibernating a foot under the wet sand.

I felt like an archeologist,

excavating an Egyptian tomb

and at the same time a thief,

stealing sacred artifacts.

But I had to have you.

My fingers traced every inch of you.

Like brail, your many marks told me your story.

I would have continued admiring your beauty,

but upon hearing my mother’s shrill call

I pocketed you and ran back down the beach to the mini van.

On the way home I gripped you tightly in my left hand,

egg salad sandwich in my right.

convinced that if I let you out of my sight for one second,

you would quickly change your fundamental state

evaporating out of my reach.

But eventually I dozed off,

feet dangling from the car seat,

cloaked in the hazy comforting feeling of childhood.

I don’t remember ever letting you go

but when I awoke my hand was empty

and you existed only in my memor

Ode to the Hunt

Father harvested you from the mountains,

from your sacred alpine temple.

He brought you to our kitchen table

Your neck broken,

your eyes empty.

You were a sack of blood and flesh

but you were also our family’s golden trophy.

Father took me around back to the shed,

strung you up from an old oak branch,

and handed me his butcher knife.

It felt foreign in my small chubby hands,

a foreignness I would experience again only on my wedding night.

Father guided my blade

into your perfect chestnut throat.

It was beautiful,

that rush of wine.

Deeper in color than anything God ever created

and thicker than any syrup that had ever touched my lips.

It fell and pooled around my feet

staining my white shoes.

We hung your head above the fireplace

and that night we accepted you into our bodies.

Mother made stew and steamed beets

but to all of us it was the most delicious feast we had ever tasted.

All night long I could feel you inside me

and when I closed my eyes later I found myself aboard your back,

my fingers entwined in your golden fur,

riding beneath the swelling moon.