Chukar Hunt
We’re in the John Day valley
chasing chukars all afternoon.
A beautiful Asian game bird,
a little bigger than quail,
has taken well to the mountain west.
We flush them from a draw
to a ridge and when we get there
they decide the next ridge,
quarter mile away, is best.
A little flight for them
an hour’s hike for us.
We get a few shots but end up
with the food we brought.
We hoist an army-surplus umbrella tent
on a patch of old river bed.
Our fire, river rush, the stars
and a can of pork and beans.
To hold the warmth we heap stones
over the bed of coals.
Sleeping bags cocoon our tired bones.
Half hour later, in the first drift of sleep,
something explodes.
Then another.
A fragment hits the tent.
We learn that river rocks
heated to the right degree
turn into grenades.
The bombardment lasts two hours.
I imagine the chukars chuckling
somewhere in the night.
Boulder
The sun rose in the east
the day before basic training
when I fished the canyon–
and again the day after,
in the flow of the South Santiam
familiar to my wet boots,
where life made sense.
I climbed around
a truck-sized boulder
and under draping alder
for a clear path
to roll a fly out and across
a pool the shadows held,
the bayonet range
walking behind me.
Gary Lark’s most recent collection is Daybreak on the Water, Flowstone Press. His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Willawaw, ZYZZYVA and others. Gary and his wife Dorothy live in Oregon’s Rogue Valley.