the barks of men silenced
the hunt over,

the sun driven drip of water from pines,
a petty pelting on my shoulders

a grand distraction--this season of minutes, hours
when white becomes invisible

until its ghost dots my cloak, streams down my rifle barrel
and falls again onto blood drenched ground

this patter of sound, such a docile dirge
to the slaughtered

the daybreak tracks the doe made now gone:
victim of a rising sun, a warmth she will never again know