The hour before I rise

is the hour that elk roam

the second-growth forests

of Northern Michigan,

foraging the wreck of

resources that prosperity

left behind (and to which

their non-native ancestors

were introduced a mere

hundred years ago)—

a slack realm of hunger

and sleeplessness—

sounding a century’s woes

of immigration and

assimilation, the wax and

wane of habitat, of calving

survival, poaching control,

and “management of

hydrocarbon development”

—calls I hear clearly

in the sleepless pause

before I rise to daylight

a hundred miles south

from where they roam,

their bugling raw and

ungrateful, impossible to ignore.