Up Twisp River

Five dogs--
eager, taut-muscled hounds,
lunged alongside Twisp River
     led
by the cougar's scent
on the heavy, sodden snow.

Imagine the chase.

Three miles up
they encircled her at the river's edge,
    in haunch-deep, bloody snow--
a doe's ragged carcass in her claws.

She leapt up
a shaggy-limbed pine,
stretched upwards, into the slate-colored sky
and clung there.

Two men
followed the noise from transmitter collars,
the shill yelps, the frantic baying,
to the scene of snarl and scream:

                       One man
                  raised his rifle,
                       aimed;
                  held it steady.

Her long tawny body dropped
through the cool,
            turbulent air.

Imagine
that cougar's final growl
as a futile sort of prayer for wings,
           or mercy--
just as improbable ,
        and as rare.

Linda M. Robertson

1/10/2012