Antilocapra americana

Pronghorn
Shelley Armitage


 Antelope and I

 

You see me

—of course—

before I see

 

                you.

 

But then

 

     as I walk

 

a sage fringed trail

 

up the draw

 

     and down

 

something—

 

     a shared animal presence?

 

—makes me look west:

 

See you.

 

 

                                         Even at seventy-five yards

 

                                         your bold white chest,

 

                                                         radiant exception

 

                                         to the plains gone dun,

 

                                         cures my near-sightedness.

 

 

You, on the other hand, can spot movement up to three miles away.

 

 

 

Pronghorn, kwahada, antilocapra americana,

 

neither antelope nor deer,

 

          (your closest living cousin, the

 

          giraffe),

 

ancestry

 

assures you persist—

 

hollow hairs, your antifreeze for winter,

 

camouflaged coat, butterscotch

 

stripes and all.

 

Side set eyes catching worlds

 

     in their orbs.

 

Long lashes like sunshades.

 

Nervous, curious—

 

 

 

Pleistocene genes

 

still bolt, then stand.

 

 

 

Now

 

           this is fossil fuel:

 

your ancient bloodline remembers

 

ghosts of grasslands, chaparral, and cacti.

 

At speeds of over fifty miles an hour you

 

      disappear—

 

sliding under on knees,

 

mocking the wisdom

 

of barbed wire.

 

 

 

But I’m exotic,

 

am I not?

 

Old checkered farm coat,

 

sagging sleeves, baggy warm-ups

 

a whiff of acrid humanness?

 

The unwashed.

 

Best tolerated upwind.

 

 

 

I am held at a distance

 

     by your gaze.

 

 

 

We used to talk to animals—

 

    or was it that animals once talked to us—

 

until evolutionary changes in the trachea

 

made one claim superiority over the other.

 

 

 

But if you were the carnivore

 

I would offer myself up

 

even as you did to the old Zuni

 

            line to the heart

 

            prayer over horns

 

 

 

Instead, I can only say in a stillness beyond thought:

 

I would be the grass before you.

 

 

 

~~~~~

Shelley Armitage is professor emerita at the University of Texas at El Paso.  She stewards the family grasslands near Vega, Texas where the antelope still roam.