Boars on the Mountain

Cheney Crow

In fall, the mountain holds the howling

of the hounds that chase the boars’

swift feet, stiff hair, flat snout and slashing tusks,

outpace the hunters’ steady trot,

their gossip and their guns.

Boars gather by moonlight,

disinter well-tended shrubs,

disrupting vineyards, orchards, rows

of squash, fennel, sweet white asparagus.

The mountain grips

hewn vestiges of stronghold,

rock hauled from the valley,

histories untold, retold, retouched, varied.

The mountain lifts

ancient cedars to the sky,

surveys the valley’s poppies,

records secrets

of each beating heart beneath it.

It knows all of mine. Everything that haunts me.

Cheney Crow first worked as a musician and sculptor, recording life in song and shape, then as linguist and teacher. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, International Poetry (translation), The Cortland Review, Terminus, Scoundrel Time, The Ekphrastic Review, The Wrath-Bearing Tree and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, Texas, with a red-shouldered hawk nest in a tall tree nearby, small rabbits, occasional foxes and mockingbirds rehearsing the backup beeps of construction vehicles tearing down small older homes.