Our Time Is Up

Down around Castle Valley we have
Our share of the wild and the feral:
Skunks, deer mice, pinyon mice, scorpions,
Black widows, coyotes, and foxes;
Ravens, turkeys, mourning doves, magpies;
Early summer plagues of grasshoppers,
Interlocking colonies of ants,
The weird scream of a mountain lion
One cold night, floating down from the Rim,

All sorts of creatures that frighten us,
Annoy us, delight us, disgust us,
Uncontrolled or uncontrollable.
None of them seem stranger, in context,
Than any of our domesticates--
Cows, goats, horses, peacocks, dogs and cats--
Except for the grazing herds of deer
Wandering the valley by the dozens,
Big, scruffy, insolent and mule-eared.

They're wrong, somehow, for any context,
Bred placid from decades without wolves,
More numerous than the goats and cows,
Big as mares, pestiferous as mice,
They crowd the road's shoulder, fill the fields,
Look almost beautiful in half light,
Prick their ears at the hunger of life,
Pack shadows into silver moonlight,
Startle me with hooved thunder at night