for Scott McLean
Man from mud
and the blue sky was born.
His blood colors the clay.
Saying this we picked our way
through buckwheat and toyon,
carrying the .22, and over barbed wire
past red ants and meadowlarks and endless
yellow clay
and we looked for rabbits.
Stillness: not a fissure of the rock
disturbed; nothing to disrupt
the commerce of snakeroads and blackbird choirs
till night brought stars and sage smell
and coyotes yawned in their hollows.
We had shot enough
To recognize that in the very dust
there by the dark-haired oaks and powdered clay
lay fossil traces of our breath, and names.
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