trapping for beaver (in photoshop)
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sunset overhill behind me twilight nearing
i stand high on a ledge -- rocky outcrop
quiet water on two sides tent royalblues behind me
young wispy woods aspen and juneberry around me
and more rocks loom like dinosaur backs on my island
but near me -- open water
kabetogama's 20 minutes of windy paddling
shimmers to the right and away of me
blue heron nests sit 500 feet away to the left of me
at the steep slope of trees of the other island
splash
thinking nothing of it -- fish -- writing
minutes pass. i look up instinctively
three beaver trawling
three-point heads like three-point hats
showing rounding my spot
50 feet out
two continue on along and around my island
one peels off and circles back
watching watching me
cuts a round rich swath back
turns around and files by again
same trajectory
still watching still watching
like a naval procession
like a gulf of tonkin thing or something!
passing by again 50 feet away again
like the other two on and out.
tomorrow i would arm myself with a 200 millimeter
lie in wait on the bone-colored sandstone and silver green
and copper moss dark water would lap at my feet
and the beaver would approach on the same trajectory
i would raise my scope and aim
just then the head would decline -- and... nothing...
waiting... then a fair distance away -- surface
i almost would not shoot
let the scanner sort the beaver from the lot
of shimmer -- how many pixels of beaver i have got
i do not know and the light that second night
was dimmer.
and the blue heron? they're teens. three stagger home
absolutely unacceptably late. where have you
been all day -- where have you been -- where have you
where have -- where!
Marek Lugowski
14 September 1997
Chicago, Illinois
