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4 Elk Skeleton Down the draw at dusk seven mule deer come to browse the blanched grasses around the cabin. Not all has been winter-killed this early April as these timid sisters nudge the bitter tufts. Rose-gold floods their flanks. Soon all shadows leach away. Come morning, frost ferns the windowpanes and my breath disrupts moth-dust on the sill. The branches of fog-haunted firs appear to have been assembled from brackish ash. Lichen brocades the stones hove from this forest’s decay. At the trailhead, I find an elk skeleton, its wind-strummed ribs like the empty staves of a stranded, sunlit ship in the scree. Gone the ruminant heart, the once pink and capacious lungs. On its spine a moth opens its delicate hinge. ...

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