trapping for beaver (in photoshop)
		----------------------------------------------------

		sunset overhill behind me twilight nearing
		i stand high on a ledge -- rocky outcrop
		quiet water on two sides tent royalblues behind me
		young wispy woods aspen and juneberry around me
		and more rocks loom like dinosaur backs on my island
		but near me -- open water

		kabetogama's 20 minutes of windy paddling
		shimmers to the right and away of me
		blue heron nests sit 500 feet away to the left of me
		at the steep slope of trees of the other island

		splash

		thinking nothing of it -- fish -- writing
		minutes pass.  i look up instinctively

		three beaver trawling

		three-point heads like three-point hats
		showing rounding my spot
		50 feet out
		two continue on along and around my island
		one peels off and circles back
		watching watching me
		cuts a round rich swath back
		turns around and files by again

		same trajectory
		still watching still watching
		like a naval procession
		like a gulf of tonkin thing or something!
		passing by again 50 feet away again
		like the other two on and out.

		tomorrow i would arm myself with a 200 millimeter
		lie in wait on the bone-colored sandstone and silver green
		and copper moss dark water would lap at my feet

		and the beaver would approach on the same trajectory
		i would raise my scope and aim
		just then the head would decline -- and... nothing...

		waiting... then a fair distance away -- surface
		i almost would not shoot

		let the scanner sort the beaver from the lot
		of shimmer -- how many pixels of beaver i have got
		i do not know and the light that second night
		was dimmer.

		and the blue heron?  they're teens.  three stagger home
		absolutely unacceptably late.  where have you
		been all day -- where have you been -- where have you
		
		where have -- where!


			Marek Lugowski
			14 September 1997
			Chicago, Illinois