LOOKING FOR MOUNTAIN BEAVERS

by David Wagner (1926- ) Staying Alive.
Indiana University Press. 1966

The man in the feed store called them mountain beavers
When I asked about the burrows riddling the slope
Behind our house. "Sometimes you see dirt moving,

But nothing else," he said. "They eat at night.
My tomcat ate one once, and now he's missing."
He gummed his snuff like a liar. "One ate him."

That night my wife and I, carrying flashlights,
Went up the hill to look through brush and bracken
Under the crossfire of the moon for beavers

And, keeping quiet, knelt at pairs of holes
And shone our lights as far as we could reach
Down the smooth runways, finding nothing home,

No brown bushwhacker's prints straddling a cat's paw,
Not even each other's lights around the corners.
We ground our heels then, bouncing on the mounds,

Hoping to make one mad enough to exist,
But nothing came out. Should we believe in nothing?
Maybe the cat just dreamed it was eating something.

And turned against the nearest raw material
Till its own bones were curled up in its head
Which then fell smiling down a hole and died.

Or maybe the man meant the holes were the beavers:
The deeper they go, the less there is to see.
We felt the earth dip under us now and then

Through no fault of its own, shifting our ground.
But seeing isn't believing: it's disappearing.
All animals are missing-or will be.

Something was eating us. We thumped their houses,
Then walked downhill together, swing our flashlights
Up and around our heads like holes in the night.

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