On the porch at Wawona he would sit
in his wheelchair and watch the deer.

He spoke with his clear eyes
and his palsied body.

Did you see Ginger today? Ginger was a doe.
Yes, he said, by looking right at you

and raising his eyebrows and stiffening his back.
Do you want to go inside now?

No, he said, pursing his lips and lowering his eyes.
For thirty years he was fed with a spoon

and a spill-proof cup. Sometimes he would choke
and spit up like an infant.

When he had to go, someone had to go with him
and hold him on the toilet and wipe him clean.

Sometimes he would sigh and smile the calmest smile.
When he was happy and excited he would kick his feet

and wave his arms like broken flowers.
The deer came right up to him

and ate the grain scattered at his feet
and sniffed his knees
and breathed with him in the early evening.

–Greg Pape,
Animal Time
Accents Publishing

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.

I. Buffalo Trace

Stars glitter across black pastures,
gleam and shine in the eyes of buffalo.
How many stars ride the dark dome
of a buffalo’s eye? How many
buffalo breathe the scents of grass
and river mist, starlight glinting
in the frost on their dense curled coats,
on flecks of mica riding their hooves
as they move in clans and gather
along the trace that leads to the shoals
and shallows of the crossing? Is the river
of the milky way their map? What
calls them? Why, when they come
to the two canoes by the river,
do they jump over the first where a man
sleeps, and smash the second
with their hooves until it splinters
and bloodies the fore bones of their legs?
Why do they spare him?

II. Bird in the Hand

Cold still sunlit hour, December
in the Bitterroot. The sun was about
to let the Bitterroots rise up in front of it,
the moon was rising over Kentucky,
shining on the river where the Buffalo
used to cross, easing up the east slopes
of the Sapphires. Chickadees flew
back and forth from the apple tree
to the feeder, picking up sunflower seeds.
One flitted across my head twice,
thanking me, maybe, for filling the feeder.
Up in the bare branches the birds
picked open the seeds. One chickadee
was looking at me. I made my chickadee
sound, took a handful of seeds from the bucket
and held out my open palm flat and still.
The bird landed on my middle fingertips.

I felt the delicate cleaving of its small
clawed feet. It looked into my eyes,
hopped into my palm and took a single seed
then flew back to a branch in the apple tree.
Ah, Chickadee, now that was something.

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.

Little velcro-like seeds of hound’s-tongue
in the soft gray under-fur
and the black-based golden quills
lightly trembling like a clump
of stiff grass and the black eyelids closed
on the black eyes dozing
or playing dead in the grass
beside the refuge trail.

Young dark inside-out pin cushion,
be careful, the dogs are coming,
dragging people on leashes.
Things could get snappy.
Some dad might test his shoe leather
against the stilled bush of your wintry defenses.
Some dad’s dachshund all day pent up
might come grinning, following his nose
right up your rear quills, then,
as to human kindness and animal cuteness,
all bets are off.

Why think now of the Siberian tigers
pacing a small space behind a glass wall
in the vast foyer of a Las Vegas casino?
Or the one with a coat of snow and shadow,
tracked, darted, and loaded in a crate,
its power conscripted to sell tires on television?
Your bundled body in quiet camouflage
needs the right background in which to disappear.

We should lift you with our minds
back into the pine tree and let you sleep.
We should bow to you at a distance
honoring the peculiar earth spirit
you are. We should pet you
with our hands in our pockets.

–Greg Pape,
Animal Time
Accents Publishing

More from Animal Time and Greg Pape:

• “Rooster Song”
• “At the Small Animal Auction”
• Animal Time at the Accents Store
• Greg Pape author page
• “Cave” by Greg Pape

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.

Threads, the rooster, calls vehemently
repeatedly to whom or what, the sun?
Clearly he means what he cries

through his tight cords and open beak,
his red pelt of throat and chest feathers
rising and falling with the shrill wind

of his song—strains of Coltrane
splitting the sax’s reed.
Often his is the first voice I hear

at dawn, a voice different than other
rooster’s voices. Blind Bob, Big Red,
Little Big Red, Wavelength and Threads,

all different cries—cockadoodledoo won’t do
to call up their songs. They play
different instruments. The young cockerelle

sounds forlorn as he tries out his song.
His pipes not fully formed, he can’t
hit the high notes that Threads, the old world

chanticleer, belts out lustily to the first light.
Once from a bridge above the flooded
Santa Cruz River I saw a rooster

perched on the bloated body of a drowned cow.
It was hard to tell in the muddy rush
if he crowed, and he crowed over and over,

out of fear or joy. But he went on crowing
until he was a speck of red rushing away
in the flood, until he was nothing

but a small flare of memory lighting up
in another rooster’s dawn song.

–Greg Pape,
Animal Time
Accents Publishing

More from Animal Time and Greg Pape:

• “At the Small Animal Auction”
• Animal Time at the Accents Store
• Greg Pape author page
• “Cave” by Greg Pape
• “Dog” by Greg Pape

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.