feed corn in field for weeks
to fatten them up for the ****

from stands of live oak, hackberry
they would come, fawn and doe

leaving tracks in morning dew
to and from the scattered grain

I slept through their feeding, then
followed their trail into the copse

where I found fawn gutted
by the mythic mountain lion

I did not believe existed,
until that morn

I pulled the carcass to the edge of the wood,
in view of the stand

where I waited with rifle and starlight scope
for the great cat

who came with the waning crescent moon
and did not know I shot him

through his red river heart
as he crouched to finish his meal

(Cross Timbers, Texas, 1991)