Two poems about resisting actions that come
                                                       second nature to the protagonists.

CLICK…CLICK                                                   

Predator eye honed,
since turning BB-gun-five,
to its feathered edge, I catch
the ruffed grouse flashing
its neon-red failure
to blend into the November gray-
black bed of quaking aspen leaves
matching its mottled jacket
not quite exactly. It cocks
its head, eyes me up
and down, crouches,
stretches, sets
sleek-plumed for the raucous
launch that trips my neurons
to cue my arms vaulting into the shotgun’s
buoyant choreography, into the port de bras
wings of the poised
ballerina on point.
                              I click
the safety to Off. With this brisk slap 
smack across the ear of silence, I take bead
while silence, in defiance, turns
its tearful cheek. The bird flitting
out of range—fifty years of habit sapped 
just like that—I click
the safety back to On. What unfamiliar 
whisper from behind the scrim   
is this that flips the trigger  
finger’s dimmer switch,
helix-deep, to soothe us
into beatific bloom? Thrilled,
bedazzled by the shattered jagged bits
of fragile masculinity, I jig
and juke down rocky slope, shotgun
shells jumping in my jacket
pockets like maracas keeping tempo
to a syncopated pulse. 
                                  Grappling
the sinewy old pickup truck’s steering
wheel over gopher-holed meadow
back to gravel road—my Montana
manhood dancing in the cab with mistresses
I no longer need to please by squeezing
off the shot—we rock
into a requiem dusk, our roughed-up hearts
drumming hot, our knuckles, white
with love, bloodied only on the inside.                                        

                                                                 For Gordon Stevens

WOODNOTES TO THE CHURCHGOING WOODCUTTER

You claim to trust in God, His law
to love thy neighbor as thyself? Then you must
believe this three-century-old cottonwood
tree, standing monumentally before you and far beyond
its fecund budding years, is still God’s
darling, holding, in its gnarled arms,
in its clenched fists, more of God’s beloved sky
than it ever held when hefting
the heavy fleece of leaves from which it took
seven wintry months to catch
its breath. You claim to believe
death is, in fact, the vital first step
toward that soulful afterlife you know exists
but cannot picture? Simply look up.
Flip your chainsaw’s toggle switch
to OFF. Step closer. Lay your pious ear
against bark. Sigh deep to the heart-
wood singing home sweet home
to fliers and climbers looking on
through all of time, not one whit—no matter
what piffle the bible posits—the lesser
of God’s harmonious notes. Stop. You better
step far back. Peer hard and long
through the nearby cabin’s windows. See yourself
sitting, pen in hand, at the marble altar
inside, pondering the maestro
you claim to believe in, Him
tirelessly conducting with infinite wands
His symphonies. Listen to the music of the universe
unfurled by earth’s oldest virtuosos
creating more warmth than the cordwood
of this one tree you could, so coolly, choose not
to cut and forever burn.

                                                                 For Sara Walsh
                                                                 And For Julia Butterfly Hill