HIGH IN IDAHO ROCKIES *

   by Dick Bakken



So lost since daybreak way up
wakened in all that oxygen,
I crashed down through wild
brush to step up on log rot
suddenly breath to breath
with an elk. I knew his heat
wafting my face, eyes widened
as mine. I could have touched
his quivering lips, that heart
pounding into my chest.
Alive with oxygen I marveled
through a span of antlers revolving
with that great head and all of me
before he stepped calmly away.
I heard him vanish into brush
and silence, then down beyond
where he had breathed, a cutbank
wavered, thus a road. He dissolved
back up into Idaho, me an hour
on down into Montana and
a long hypnotic trudging out.

*Ends of evergreen needles and mist
droplets from creek cascades make
points round which oxygen is created.