Crystal Creek

You so fleet and youthful must have split a thousand apples.

Oh I watched you as you steadied first your heart then your breath

Venturing out you scanned a thousand blades of grass,

And when you drew your bowstring, it was a swift and cordial death.

As you stood in the wilderness

Did you feel the silence in the stillness?

That was me with you in the forest

For you knew the balances

The balances before us.

I was guarding Crystal, Crystal Creek

Oh a tree it’s a record, a home of memories,

And every bird springs from an old master’s canvas, full in flight.

And the pond I go to sparkles in a vast estuary,

And those men saw nothing staring drunken through their sites.

The one who spied me out as goods to plunder,

I had to show the world that he was not a true hunter.

That was me,

When he saw me naked,

He was interrupting,

Something sacred.

I was guarding Crystal, Crystal Creek.

And the newsmen circled leaving trails of cigarette butts

Machine-like up the hill to Crystal Creek.

“James,” she said, “who would do this thing I’ve seen today,

I cannot hold my mic, my hands are shaking, knees are weak.”

“They found a man and he was wrapped in a deerskin,

Riddled through with boxes of his friends’ ammunition.

Turn the camera off,” she said.

That was me.

Oh my noble animals,

You must act with reverence,

With reverence not like cannibals.

I was guarding Crystal, Crystal Creek