The Painted Hills

Those bands of red ochre; 
those black mottled lines 
grayed down by the wind;
they have the matte luster 
of hand prints 
on cave walls,  
where firelight 
once feathered 
into aurochs 
and horses 
and bison 
and deer,  
their bodies rounded by
the dun of crushed shells, 
painted by peeling skin 
against porous rock, 
animal eyes  
thin-swept by charcoal, 
looking, still, all this way, 
piercing but dull, and 
filled with the great, soft tragedy 
of that which has vanished, 
buzzing low 
as though breathing, 
crouched to the earth, 
among the sagebrush, 
in the stir before rain.