The scientists traverse the forest

and decide to become hunters.

They search for an antidote from

the slanted nightmare: mists

each morning shape

their way in headlights, their bodies

beneath blankets, not a thing enters

except the tired tug of night. They study

pools of warm onyx. The way oxygen

pries the shade into a mirror. In some cases, the orb

weavers make webs between antlers.

And when the deer sheds the velvet, it tangles

in silk, what’s left piled with

pine needle. Home is home because it is

collapsable. More than this,

the blank state of forest. Recording

footfalls, the failure of sound. The hunters

cannot sleep. Inside them a mutation.

Their skulls generating cartilage. The only

certain variant is their memory. The way

nothing ends in only their hands. It keeps

ending. Another check against their theory:

the search cannot change who they might be

after what they’ve been. The rains flung

then clipped. Tents shuddering night

but they’ll go anywhere laced

with awe. A northern sky drummed

into ribbons. Some mysterious lights

falling from dark between pine, red eyes

buoys in a lake. They pull their bodies

against radiance. If their hands could curtain

what demands to live inside them—just once

they’d swallow the sound

machine hum, let night track

them into the open field. How close

to reverence are we now?