Trapper’s Poem
Shadows were moving across my trapline
cabin window that night
I said, “It’s just Canada’s Snow Geese
making their southern flight.”
I heard some timber wolves howl
and a coyote’s sharper bark
and a grey owl telling of snow
flakes, falling in the dark.
Sneaking past my bunk then
there came a squeaking rat,
Who plunked hi rump upon his throne
which was my brand new hat.
I fixed the crouching rat now
with a hypnotic stare
And froze him in a posture
like sitting in a chair.
I felt like a magic power
some strange nights snare my soul
And to the frozen bushrat
my story must be told.
Intellect with hypnotic power
I commenced to communicate
Beyond the comprehend of reason
my points to orchestrate.
Suddenly with a weird reversal
The rat changed from the norm
and demanded forthright answers
To questions from this form.
“You tell me,” he said,
“who tells the northern Summer Tern
To start their southern flight
when sun beyond the Southern pole
Has split the Arctic night?”
The Warbler waits
the cold fronts come,
How does he come to know
to catch the air, so thin and high
It lets the cross winds blow?
How can the Long Tailed Cuckoos
On New Zealand’s Islands stay,
then fly to find their parents
Four thousand miles away?
And tell me how the humming bird
six hundred miles can go
A quarter ounce in none stop fight
across the Gulf below?”
Now when the rat these questions asked
his beady eyes grew dim
And his horrible grip from my
soul did slip, like a purgatorial sin.
“It’s plain,” I said, “that all the birds
have clocks within their heads
And a compass fine, with
programmed time to function till they're
Dead.
There had to be a Maker, who put
everything in place,
But questions brought by bushrats
thought
Shouldn’t vex the human race.
“Now you thieving rat,” I said,
“You’ve lived here long enough
You’ve eaten all my raisins
and even hid my snuff.”
I reached out slowly for my gun
which made a deafening roar,
The dethroned rat and tattered hat
I fired out the door __.
But I can still hear wolves howling
and a coyote’s sharper bark,
And I can still hear a grey owl
hooting in the dark.
Edward
