Moose, Looking

It's the jowls, really,
and the water dropping from them,
the beautiful unslurping
just next to the car, idling.
And the brown
of its coat, molting,
and of its round eye
dark enough to contain the field, the ditch,
and the moose's large life.
And my life even.
The scene is unstartling
for the moose, and somehow
for me too
because of the jowls, the eye, and the slow
rise of its forequarters
from its hind
like the landscape itself
ambling up to me
for a long drink
I can never really have.

Copyright © 2007 Anna Leahy All rights reserved
from Constituents of Matter
Kent State University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission