A suicidal pheasant
offered himself to me
as sunrise
peeled the thin skin off
a dreaming canyon.
The tree-line and hills cracked
knuckles.
This silly bird snapped his own neck
against a hackberry stump.
So strange.
I gathered him up—
quietly
mourning.
On the hood of my truck,
desert heat loosened soft meat
from bird-ribs and bird-spine.
Now a funeral has come, the moon,
corpse-white over the valley.
I prod coals with a stick
in my limestone fire pit.
Coal pebbles sputter
raspy hisses.
Tomorrow I’ll make a fine tobacco
purse from the bladder
and feathers: sierra-brown,
navajo-mud-red.
