for Heath
Our flashlight crops the night. My brother and I climb
the stream bed rocks and valley walls rise black
as nothing. We scoop in the wet crotch,
crawdads already startled
by the way water cannot hide
our sizes: some large and some
small, some with exoskeletons
and some with bones on the inside.
Scuttle muck silts our feet, soft,
like something of the air; the great horned owl
releasing pellets of mouse bones, tiny
fur nests for the less useful parts of the dead
animal. We step over these on the way home,
slopping our brittle prizes that climb
the plastic pail walls and knock loose
with each step, each handle tight. Something
moves on the trail ahead and we breathe, Please,
the day’s energy drawn hard into the dark,
as the battery trickles up and we come out
under the first streetlight, accompanied
by the whiskery click of crayfish,
washed and without words.
