from bog/prairie

KETTLE HOLE BOG


                 glacial pool          *          arctic run-off 


consider 10,000 years ago, the color:     ice blue / 
consider 37 years ago, the trail map:       penciled

now/presently:                                    
                                               cocoa(ed) / enlarged pdf


(a death related to effigy)



creeping under /  up from  /  out of  /                  the murky, muddy-brown deadly parts, 

 
                 mummified in acid: horses, cows, deer (the men in town remember something much 
                 less tundra,
                                                 lake bed


                                       ) 

& catching fishy bodies sluggish in clay, “horned pout” can survive extreme conditions:
90º temperatures / in oxygen levels as low as 1 part per million 


consider the acid water, preserving body parts: become the deer— (specifically, its parts: 
antler, hoof, leg) 


become the preservation of the body, this body: the outsides red & raw (of 
cranberries, pitcher plants, peat moss) 

this body moving towards a shade of scarlet, 


                                                 be this glacial graveyard


                                                                 *

 
& TAKING MY GUN, I SLING IT FORTH & WALK INTO THE PLEISTOCENE


barrel driver, sleepwalker, evocative somnambulist,

I found your skeletal remains soaked in black,             

                 black acid. 

and feeling your saberteeth dripping grease, 

grease of tar, 

raging oil-drum fires, pooling night, 

drooling rush— 

                  (rushing) el train, glittering 

into the mouth of a pearl-less oyster,   tunnel sludge

what’s left of the shell—                     

                                 if not exactly a call for “wilderness”    


instead, a gagging cat throat,    

red,      

red fire hydrant 

resting— (red) silhouette out of the leaf rot

                                                    my mouth mammoth: wooly & mud-colored crashing into the lake bed,

bog-tired, 

                 into a coffin laced with webs of cranberry & deer skin,
                 into a coffin laced with cranberries
                 into a coffin laced w/ garlands of cranberry & deer skin,

my tusk-tongue piercing the sky-blue mirror— 

and reflecting out of the water,

I write this eulogy for a time.


                                                                 *

 
SKINNY WINTER BOG


to go no further than


the rabbit,


a beating heart


under the still— 
 

(we are) connected thru sedge
 

& spindle,


the bog rosemary a sheet of icing over snow


                                                                 *
Sarah J. Jedd manifested west to Denver, Colorado (in the rearview: New Hampshire/Chicago). She teaches yoga-infused creative writing to undergrads at CU Boulder, where she is currently pursuing an MFA. Being only hours away from her 200 RYT, she breathes in mountains.