East Indian Red Poem by Noah Smits

Burnt out on obligation, creatures shuffling in the brush
beside the barn elect to surface as the herders' cries subside,
their trotting cattle turning in as turning out through gates behind
the woodshed comes their little walkway, homeward winding,
blinding headlights from the backroads finding gravel driveways, shining
with the pivot of the tires past the rooftop of the ranch
across the hollow where we congregate: the kitchen's golden bath,
and from the tabletop devotional I read, as sliding doors
are shut and bolted with a rumbling sound, the message of the Lord:

Deceptive are my senses, yet my sight that scans the page
recounts to me that all that's real deceives and tricks us in some way,
from goals forgotten, classes wasted, sham careers, to Nature proud,
adorned in majesty, whose rainstorms feed her rivers
and whose rivers feed her lakes, where, as the bear in want of honey
swings, and stings accost his paw, a puma tenses up its jaw,
its brawny neck arched down to line its ravished eyes with this expanse,
this moonlit surface roiling luringly with fish in schools of dance—
one there! —a pounce—a splash—a hissing beast, discouraged, soaking wet;

and silent company we make as all our lakeside land
seems mighty trifling as we mull along the porch with folded hands,
our calls unanswered since our head count came one short: one boy is lost,
one meal is cold, so with my flashlight I go sleuthing
in the undeveloped wood, all heat and ice in soul and body,
tracking clawprints, mumbling nothings over cricket-chirpy ground
and as I halt, sense ancient redness mock what's lost but now was found,
I smell the gore and whisk my wrist and see my son in golden light
and crack apart like some piñata in the California night.