Do you feel it when you look into the fire?
The hairs on your neck will stand up
Do you feel it pulse inside you when
Your sight narrows
and sweat. It whispers in the heart
When you have been denied
The crimson anger swells
and its nails tear into
the flesh of your
Being

The first time I felt it
In the fifteenth winter of my life
When my grandfather was still
On this side of time-
I watched his wrinkled hands
load the rifle
And the snow was thick
The cigarette smell of his truck cab
The walk into the forest
Birds that sing in morning
Suns ray. We crossed into
The valley and walked around the
Circumfrence. My feet were wet
And the rifle was heavy
My skin was cold
I dare not complain

the long wait

There a golden stag
My grandfather pointed
And with an urgent whisper
We drop to the frigid ground
And I follow his finger out
In the  valley among the brambles
He stands

Heartbeats among the silence
and the smell of stale cigarette
breathe among the pines...
the grain of wood on the rifle
I see every line and the black
of the beast's eyes through the scope

the feeling of time dragging slowly
no longer seconds and minutes but
the multitude of years between heartbeats and breaths
I see the "target" as the ten thousandth time I have fired
This rifle I breathe
He breaths and my grandfather whispers
a scream in my ears

I hear the golden watch around my
grandfather's wrist tick away
centuries and I am a thousand
years old and that buck is
ten thousand years old
Both of us hungry and cold


then the morning was broken
and birds flew away in haste
My grandfather's loud cheer
and his wrinkled hand clasping
my shoulder.

"You've caught the fever now boy!"

It's warm coagulated blood melts the snow
And the cold steel of the knife
My grandfather's ****** smile and the look of pride
"Good shot, son. I hope no man is unlucky enough to find a place between your cross-hairs."

You feel it now and again
A greater high than any
Chemical can give
Even that tightening of the chest and the smell of blood on the nostrils.

I see it sometimes in the fire
In the red embers late at night
I gaze into the glow
Inside it's deep heavy laugh
As it gazes back at me