The Moose

From the bus, it was a hot, dry afternoon; the sun glittered on stark asphalt. The bus came onto a high, dry hill;
all at once we were surrounded
by soft, moving woods.

Then we were near a road,
and suddenly loomed large
a moose.
He was standing there with four
trees behind him, quite close, to where we were; he raised his head.

The trees tinkled like tuning forks— trees that had risen out of dreams.

Nobody could see. The moose weighed down
the world: the land bent to ownership;
a sound came forward,
a sound lighter than air.
I saw it.”

Then, two or three others swarmed in, we could not tell. There were shrill, light shrieks, or spats or moans
at the smearing road; the moose was gone.

Each made its own
small long loss, each hurried on to mark. In his leaving,
a hollow hood rose dark, and I thought
that I heard him say,
yawning,

“Another secret!
You startled my day;
that’s certainly
the end of it.”
They quickly hung back
into the woods, a fable’s place—from listening.

And the whole world sighed
with a heavy sense of hurry towards nowhere.

• Elizabeth Bishop