In Big Hollow they say
mountain lions used to bed down
on the streamside under cottonwoods,
wait for deer to come and drink.

One pounce up from watercress
and dark grass, the next day
nothing, no trace of deer bones
or guts, not even blood left there
in the soft black soil.

At twelve my sister walked the canal
every day above the hollows,
stopped along the way to look
for caterpillars on milkweed,

snakes in the shade of chokecherries
lining the sunny hillside.

One afternoon a shriek tore her
from reverie, a screaming
and thrashing like ten mountain lions.
She focused her eyes across the canal
to see in Cedar Hollow
a bobcat trapped in steel jaws
set by our cousins that morning.

You can’t forget that sound,
she says.  Nothing gets beyond
such pain.  Years later it returns
unbidden, just as everything you read
from then on about wild cats
will bring back
that sound, that scene, that place.

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