ISSUE: Winter 2005
They are shooting at the fog
that lives this morning
along the edges of the mountains,
between the knuckles of the mountains.
They will come home with fog
on the hoods of their trucks,
will gut the fog on a hook
and throw its tongue away, let its blood
whisper into their grass
and turn it white, into
forgetting. Delicate,
how the fog will change to flesh
in the pictures they’ll take—
men smiling in citrus suits
beside the dilated eyes of deer—
and hushed, how gunshots
roll down the valley
like the sound of a wet branch
breaking under foot. And the sun
coming up, pushing
its affection into the fog,
nothing for miles
but this white-yellow glow,
this halo of star-touched
water softly shot
in the distance and the day
quietly dying.
