Sobre Los Animales

39 SWANN BRIAN SWANN SOBRE LOS ANIMALES Behind the grove of oaks I start to climb the bonedry creek, turning my back on the valley and the Pauba ranch where Caspasahpish signed the unkept treaty, and the god Nanachis walked. I scrape over rocks. Sandstone tears flesh from my hands. I watch blood stick to rocks like pledges, feeding flies. Then climb again, past bees swarming in an empty oak, past sage and snakeskin, leaving red on rocks until inside intaglios of mountains, part of the composition, one within another. Just as I reach my cabin with its bowlegged deermouse, a gust tosses dusk around the sun. Lares and penates of the place know I'm back before I enter, and the red-tailed hawk, banking against the toyon-berry west, screams with joy at hawkness. Through windows I see coyotes, early. Together we watch ravens burn themselves up, their ash floating around like shadows. Coyotes become rocks as I walk out and gently blow on buckwheat flowers ants have made around their hole, 40 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW fans of dried blood. A brown moth disappears in the black encrusted skillet on the stump. I stand in the doorway, disappearing too, getting ready to lie down with animals and the sounds of animals; their flesh spirits, shadows my shield. ...