We can’t prove this, but signs are there. The ravine along Devil’s Backbone road, where nobody wants to go, even in broad daylight, is marked by the rare extra large footprint, a musk of decay and wet wool. Years ago, a boy took a polaroid from up on the road. “It started to run when it saw me and got away so fast”, he told his father . “I could smell it all the way up from the creek bed”. One investigator, hiking down there, wearing night vision goggles, carrying a go-pro camera, caught movement in a thicket. He approached, whispering over and over, “oh god, oh god, oh god” his breath ragged with fear, the camera sick with shake. He claims, with the pictures to prove, he found a lair. A crude willow branch bench. The creature had vacated before he could catch it in action. But there were polished bird bones, tangles of horsetail hair draped neatly in the overhead bushes. There was an extra large reed mat littered with wet leaves, and a pair of rustic needle-bones, cast on with ten rows. “I swear, I just missed it”, the man said the next day. Later, excited search parties returned with the investigator to hunt some more. No lair, no bench, no cache of bird bones, mat or knitting materials to be found. “She’s a wily one”, someone exclaimed. “Whoever said it’s a she?”, said another. “Dangit”, the investigator sighed.
Early Morning Poems 