Hunter

It sounds like rodent burrowing inside
a tree or someone unfolding
dried petals of a rhododendron,
whose lips are always bent
upon dissolving--

But it only you, as a child who digs
with a stick, deeper, closer to the minute limit
that an owl pellet circumscribes.

Each stab erases exactitude
of what the owl was, of the remaining whole
existence of the organism. Wondrous are
these cracks made now in decimals of bone
by you, merely touching

anything and nothing; so pure with want
to derive what color lines, like bark
the other side of someone's skull.