Another crowd fired upon

nothing can be done so

a crew removes saplings from the margins

where is life supposed to go

a mother horse and a colt

face away from each other

tail flicking tail grazing

Ez calls for me in the night

falls asleep against my body

The creek is so dry

we walk where we haven’t ever

frogs leap from our steps

some kids I’m assuming

don’t have to learn as I did

not to crush them with rocks

Ez tripped and was covered

in burrs we picked off

and flicked on the asphalt

where is life supposed to go

Later listening to Dylan

Ez asked who the devil is

I said a Christian Hades

who he knows from a book

The man opened fire

on students learning history

on a crowd listening to music

I know it sounds random

The Raramuri I read

breathe intentionally to help

the dancers they are watching

We cannot offer anything

until there are wounded or dead

then our offering is heroic

and talked about for a cycle

with the hunger for motives

for a taste of that part of us

We chased the backyard rabbit

until it bolted under the hedge

Where is life supposed to go

a turtle shrinks in its shell

before it can hear the number

of rounds the shooter had

Ez says the dead opossum

is interesting (interesting?)

white fur, long hairless tail

the armadillo, too,

cracked open in a ditch

we rarely see it up close

just moving through its life

old man wheeling from church

young woman carrying a hose

child walking to school

*

Brandon Krieg is the author of In the Gorge (Codhill Press), Invasives (New Rivers Press), a finalist for the 2015 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing, and a chapbook, Source to Mouth (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, BOMB, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, FIELD, The Iowa Review, West Branch, and many other journals.