A Squirrel Dies in the Tetons

Should somewhere in his years

the moment he come back to

when as a boy he saw the squirrel

convulse in death

from the stone he threw

with deadly force,

and recall how his sister wept,

the gray body of her horror

turning tremble,

contemplating the violence

brooding in his psyche,

and how the measureless mountains

shrank before death's vast chasm

emptying peak and cliff

into small body...

Should somewhere in his years

in reminiscence of soul and sin

he come to that moment

and give pause to ghost

of squirrel's haunting gift.

©2000 Dan Kantak