Elementary

At the 100-year-old National Elk Refuge near Jackson Hole, we might ask,How long does an elk live?Who’s an old elk here? We’d like to spend time with an elder elk please. Tell us how to balance our lives on this hard edge of human mean, mean temperatures, what we do and don’t want to mean. Closing the door to the news will only make you stupid, snapped my friend who wanted everyone to know as much as she did. I’m hiding in old school books with information we never used yet. Before I drove, before I flew, before the principal went to jail. Sinking my eyes into tall wooden window sashes, dreaming of light arriving from far reaches, our teacher as shepherds, school a vessel of golden hope, you could lift your daily lesson in front of your eyes, stare hard and think, this will take me somewhere. O histories of India, geological formations of Australia, ancient poetries of China, Japan, someday we will be aligned in a place of wisdom, together. Red deer, wapiti, running elk rising above yellow meadows at sundown. An elk bows her head. In the company of other elk, she feels at home. And we are lost on the horizon now, clumsy humanity, deeper into the next century than we can even believe, and they will not speak to us.