Among Elks

Woke in the brume, lilacs like turf stars. The late fawn standing in his syrups; bucks down the swale chewing sedge. We move south to slopes of sleeping poppy, past the white alder, bending heads to scent of calx—in natural dark a man tries his hand at belonging. He with greave of hide, a born hood, lay with three spikes in the clay, green peak in the breeze. He whose breathing wrongs the still. You stir now to mend, to redress? To be one of us, after all this?