Nswatugi Cave Matobo National Park (Wikimedia Commons)

The story is not long.

The wounded animal turns

stumbling over the spears already



thrust into the red future, flint points

puncturing the dawn to come

and the end is one heartbeat, two,

no more. The land is wide and made of stone.

The horizon is unseen, but also rock. The excited,

fearful cheers, too, are grain

beside grain of limestone.

The almost sundered bison’s

forelegs are giving in with the freshly

stubborn not-yet. Not yet.

It will not be long.

But the telling.

The telling is all

the rest of the evening we know

without seeing, bay trees and streams

of jasper and jade rolled down from

the silent summit into vowels.

Ocher and charcoal

marshal the hungry, and command them

endlessly into a team, the account

never ceasing as breath never

ceases but continues

the loop in and out as long

as there is awakening,

the hunters poised

beside the handprint,

the celebrant signature blood-

telling wound that always

only begins.

Michael Cadnum has published nearly forty books. His new collection of poems, The Promised Rain, is in private circulation. He lives in Albany, California.

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Published in the January 2022 issue: View Contents
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