A Stone Throw
A Stone Throw
From the sky in the form of snow
comes the great forgiveness.
Rain gown soft, the flakes descend
and rest, they nestle close, each one
arrived, welcomed, and then at home.
November
William Stafford
You make it through to the end
of the first day
of hunting season with nothing
but a bent back and a burn
deep in the pads of both your feet. Maybe
the lazy days before November
didn’t tell you enough about
how much walking out
into the woods would cost
you: the new rifle,
the one you argued
with your wife about
while the car sat on blocks
up to its shoulders, tireless.
And the hole in the roof
the scatter of rats
she said
squirrels you said
either way taking up a house
for themselves and winter
already half a foot high
and falling fast.
Later you’d tell her about
the divine moment
you walked through
the bare trees
with that new gun up
on you and already cocked,
never much for safety
you were that sure it wasn’t
a buck that stopped
you squeezing off
that first round ready
for the pressure to send it
deep into and maybe entirely
through the living
thing standing, plain view
in the blue blue noon nothing
but a bull
moose looking at you
with his pouchy mouth
and bone halo
looking at you later you’d say
the way bull
moose do but who
would know and who among you
in the room when you
tell of it
again would have let it off
like you did
without pulling it down
to field dress it
right then
while ravens came and waited
while the whole meat pile of it
steamed and seethed
rose up into the November
bearing down on you deerless
they would’ve, they said it
to you, compensated, cut
their losses and taken
their shot. But it’s enough
to hush them when you say
it stood and looked
behind you and when you did too
into the woods
you’d just come from
the boy you didn’t know
from Adam lowering
his own (though it was old
you could tell
from where you stood,
an old, sure gal)
rifle and what’s more
was he aiming at the moose
or you?
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