Finding neither rabbits nor fowl,

Morris took aim at any creature

that scrambled along the ground

or leaped in the early summer oaks

 

Lester let hang his single shot rifle over

his forearm, and tiring of the afternoon,

and the blasts of Morris’s 4 ten shotgun,

climbed uphill into the woods

until he reached a small circle

in a clearing of feathered grass

 

As he stepped into it, an object flashed,

collided with the middle of his forehead,

flattened him to gaze up blank-eyed

at the speckled firmament

 

Faraway, he heard Morris’s 4 ten

still making random mischief

Unable to move a bone, he slept and dreamed

blazing swaths of light as meteors give off

crisscrossing above him

 

After a blank space, Lester,

a small jagged cut sorely coagulating

between his wayward brows,

staggered alone into the kitchen

of their squatter’s shack,

not knowing exactly how he got there,

and swore to Morris’s girlfriend, Gertrude:

 

“No, maam,” he had not chugged him

no licker out there, “No, maam, neven a swig,”

but truth be told he had been popped

smack-dab between the eyeballs

by a lone, wild-assed bird that was itself

truly drunk or just plain loco,

and if that wasn’t it, what was it?