Cozy Campfire #670-72

Try to reproduce the conviction

you had woven to believe that brigadoon,

in their unlikely truce they line the 

campfire and no smoke rises;

the tent too small,

the boat unbalanced,

the marshmallows stale,

and they don’t say: 

We cannot leave,

There is no warmth –

But gaze unblinking

with sneezeweeds in their eyes.

Sitting contently in the bright night of 

your bedroom they tell all:

The cub lifts the teacup to his maw, held by you to his rubber paw,

and listens with a smile mold-same as the day he’d cooled

while the deer tells him what his Mother had done to hers.

The spaniel snoutward in the popcorn,

which does not rustle, (– which is for the best, 

so as not to wake anyone up,) chews up their PVC slippers;

the thin ends of their oars,

and as all three 

hover marshmallows over the flame 

they notice that these too have been chewed, 

twigs collared with bite marks 

that are surely too large to belong to this small hound. 

That night you dream of them at one another,

venison torn beneath its coat

and its throat in the jaw of a grizzly.

The crush of bone on bone and 

a handful of the bear’s flank 

like bitten towel between the spaniel’s teeth

still smelling like cinema,

fur flossing the fangs.