Jonathan Humphrey

Pith

What is life? It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~ Crowfoot

Just beyond I hear the coyotes, singing hairy-hymned, searching the newly developed subdivision for abandoned three course meals. I’ve decided to whittle a small totem pole to mark the occasion. Only the thousand-armed god of wood knows why. I’ll write to him tomorrow on something other than paper. As for the pole, I went with a straight piece of wrist-round oak I found two weeks ago, probably hauled in from the river by the neighbor’s dog, Lily. I’ll have to carve her in somewhere, being the mother of it all. Have her seated, tail at a forty-five degree angle, on the coyote’s back, above the wheat, above the loose knot of thirsty cattle, above the united gaze of a small 18th century family buried half a mile away.

dead thickets
the upright posture
of the living