North of Frog Pond
a path is beaten
into the snow so worn
that it can bear your weight
without rackets.
withoutRabbits run under moonlight,
the icy breeze
blows off the water,
turns the fresh fallen powder
to a concrete road.
withoutCheck the snares,
roadblocks that
imprison the hare,
brass wire squeezes
the neck like
a corset.
Blood stains
fur and trail.

Why did the herd
not take hold here?
not take hold hIt worked for the moose.
Maybe they went
back to the crates and cranes
which hoisted them
through the sky,
where they conversed
with seagulls.
Maybe they floated back
across the harbour on
rafts that bowed under
their mass
so that their hooves
cooled in ocean water.
cooled iPerhaps they traveled west
back to the prairies,
where oil rigs towered over earth
like tall grass
in the vast plains.
cooled iI imagine them asking
like their ancestral kin after that
first whip of rain,
first crunch of Newfoundland soil,
first taste of sea salt from the coastline,
how on earth do we survive here?
cooled iBiologists blamed
rocky shores, sheer cliffs,
and lack of buoyancy
on their extinction,
bison so use to open fields
and rolling hills that
they stepped right off the side of
Brunette Island
sinking out of sight,
an anchor or
chum for the leviathan
swimming in the dark
where myth eats myth.