Lesson: hunt
The rifle is as high as your head
but you have seen young hay fields under sheets of wind
green bending into silver and back. Pick up the gun.
Drop watch the wind ripples over open field
pushing the feathered heads of the grass down—
but here is no body of water and this wind
only whistles from the purse of rifle mouths.
Show me how fast you can run.
The whistle nicks through the meadow grass. Listen
it only wants to lullaby
to sting to sleep. Never mind the oil flooding
my face. What I’m telling you tastes like water.
Run till you reach the tree line. Bend silver and green.
If anyone stops you to drink you bite their mouth.
Blue Stain Pine
From here the limbs on the ground spell the shape of body—
though unruly though face and hands are missing.
I approach too loudly scraping through beargrass
and nothing darts or speaks.
The body only wood and sunburnt needles. No smell.
I was told at the white pine snag turn north
but here every tree is a signpost soundless arid.
I climb to the crest and see it in every direction:
the bark beetles’ white shadow soaking through the forest.
Snags of desiccated pines pry like fish bones from the ridge
wind-bent pale.
And in each a blue fingerprint seeping heartward.
Ahead meadow then forest then blue-wrought forest splintering at its joints.
If I’m alone I don’t know it.
Check Look
The magnet of lake pulls deep in the valley soaking
all breath into its pin-heart. In my room above the trees
the wood walls of the lookout warm in the cracking light. I watch
for smoke but see only ashed wind the fibrous scent of redcedar
ragged in the air. Rifle and firefinder stand oiled and close.
A blue light may play around the lookout
Ridge-spine to spine I scan the bristled nap of fir and pine.
You may still be there or—
under certain light conditions any body appears as smoke
I lullaby no one and nothing hears. The magnet draws.
What kind of forgiveness does this require?
to relieve the heavy charge hold an object— knife or coin
The rifle is cold. This house only a hand on my hand.
Jan Verberkmoes is a poet and editor from Oregon. She received an MFA from the University of Mississippi, where she was a John and Renée Grisham Fellow. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Germany, she is now pursuing her PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver. Her first collection, Firewatch, is forthcoming from Fonograf Editions in fall 2021.