MOOSE CALL

MOOSE CALL

Air expels from wide nostrils,
circling above to join frozen
Artic blue in poetic clouds of
intermittent smoke.

His breath, as wild and cold as the
wilderness landscape before him,
stretched out in unbelievable
splendor.

A faint scent on the wind
warily gets his attention, but its
still a distance away, and

there are rare Birch twigs sprouting
between crevices of boulder and rock,
so he nibbles gently to free them to his hunger.

His mate yards away with their calf calls to him,
and like most husbands with other things on their mind,
he answers nonchalantly back, but returns to
feeble eating grounds, knowing they’re
safe, for now.

Snow swirls, dusting his golden-brown
Winter coat with dainty crystals landing
across alabaster Antlers, piercing gentle
flakes contouring around them.

A site to behold; such contrast against
Northern harshness that is his
existence, but he has survival skills
to maintain position and status.

He knows the feeding grounds
along timberlined-ravines and plateaus;
familiar with secret places for watering holes,

and smorgasbords of
Willow, Birch, and Aspen
trees along the ridge’s steep
edge.

The scent gets closer.
He makes adjustment calls
that eject warning notes
into quietude

for his mate and calf to heed
and seek cover amongst
rocks and scarce shrub.

Like him, they’ve found some
tiny morsels of hidden bracken
buried beneath mounds of snow,
and they are ravenous to satisfy
near-starvation.

Restless now, the bull checks out
their domain with roving eyes, flared nostrils
cast to sky gathering signals carried
by transient breeze.

Thoughts of hunger have all but left
as the scent draws dangerously
near.

He peeks behind a boulder twice his
monstrosity; still sees nothing.

Looks back at his family still tentatively
grazing what crumbs of leaves are left.

Other Moose in the area are cautious
too; the entire herd’s instincts are
heightened to sharpened alert.

Drawing closer, drawing closer.

Distasteful scent, burning through
survival mode to panic stance,
as the onlookers face their
ultimate danger, and mortal enemy.

It happened quickly; the stampede
that broke through stillness of Artic
air, becoming tortured twists of hooves
and rumbling grunts mixed with
terror and dread.

A quiet world shattered as shots
rang out, one by one, sounds of
bullet-death repeating in thick,
chocolate fur,

spilling Moose DNA across white,
blanketed land.  No time to gather
safety nor calves.

Man doesn’t give wild
that right to save families
of their own.

The bullet whizzed past his mate and
calf and the bull sprung through space
to catch its fatal option to his
waiting chest.

Pain was instant and
immeasurable as it
seared through tissue and muscle.

It chilled there momentarily,
just long enough before it detonated
his gentle, fatherly heart;
just long enough to land one last Moose Call
to his mate and calf looking on.

They –too frozen with shock and terror
to flee, wailing guttural sorrow to careless
ears except that of their own listening,
distraught kind.

Now, they too, were easy targets
as bullets exploded their sides
into holes deep as a river gorge;
crimson blood soaking white
terrain around them like offerings
to some evil God.

They had just time enough too
to call back to him as they fell –

for the first time in their little family,
Moose Calls rung out with such deadly unison.