Pepper Trail

Bio: Pepper Trail's poems have appeared in Catamaran, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Terrain.org, Ascent and other publications, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards.  His collection, Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems, was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.  He lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he works as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Costume-Rearing,  Whooping Cranes

The caregiver, the human,is always in a costume,a sort of beekeeper’s suit, all white,covering everything, including the face,especially the face, the eyes,they attract so much, give awayso much.
The young cranes will follow anythingtwo-legged, will pick up any bad habit, human gesture, way of being,and be lost to their own kind.
So we hide ourselves among them,wade, bend, point to food(this arm a neck, this hand a beak perhaps),flap, stretch, cry out in their recorded voice,teach by sincere and false examplehow to be cranes,how to be the last cranes.

Subscribe 