I feel flat lined, on this flat earth now and then, when I follow the wild pigs’ path into the thorny mesquite, the scrub oak, I see a spike on my graph
when I find their fresh droppings, dung still steaming on morning’s crisp ground, perhaps I have found, something to make my heart pump enough to register a blip, a puny peak on the scrolling page
true, this is not the rubber tree jungle where I first learned terror and trembling unto death where I hunted other prowling prey, who had no sharp fangs or tusks to tear my young flesh, but could, with a fateful finger flick spill my rushing red blood in the puke brown soup of the rice paddies
those days now are seen faintly, through a milky haze, though for others it seems, recalled at night, in dread dreams
I do not share their nightmares--if I did I would not wander into the winter woods to face my foe, to hear its gray growling, hoping its charge will be quick on this flat land, and that the thumping in my chest will paint a beautiful sharp line on the pallid parchment