• Vol. 03
  • Chapter 05
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Hunt

Sam Underwood

Mine is an ancient hunt
taught in its infancy by these snowy hills,
which are older still;
formed from duller teeth,
taught the art of survival,
my jaws carry an offering
from the earth;
my legs are clothed in warm fur
and claws to defend
against the cold
and the spear.
I’m young and old,
like winter giving way
to spring,
renewed the same by time’s churning,
again and again,
year and after year,
stretching my body back
into the days of stories,
when my form was etched
into the walls of a cave.

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Hunt

Sam Underwood

I haven’t forgotten;
I’m just not as familiar
with the new face in the side
of the mountain,
or the blackened, rotten carcasses
of the salmon that bob up and down
in the icy river.
The trees I have known since
before my birth,
and I remember the names of the ones
that have been cut down;
I sleep where the mountain dips
to meet the earth,
forming a womb from which I awake
to hear cracks of thunder
in spite of the clear morning sky.
After this, the earth becomes a stranger.

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