Buffalo Skull

by Jefferson Hansen

    indebted to the lines
    'the
    buffalo's skull
    is gone'
    in Robert Kroetsch's 'Stone Hammer Poem'

the buffalo skull is gone

replaced with the live crow
the crow is gone because the sculpted apple arrived

the sculpted apple took a trip downriver

did the buffalo skull also take a trip

the boatman is tolling for us

i am as beside you as possible
death is in the loam
at the edge of the river

your eyes contain black and white
they see as the sculpted apple did
the nuances in blank

you peeled my skin
gave my face its unlikely shape
kept blood from spilling

we tear up at the wrong funerals
ones for distant distant relations

proximity breeds callousness

like buffalo skulls
shattering caws
manufactured fruit

or, quite simply, like spies

for our own good
we are not
what we are