-1Bigfoot Country
It's a rhythmic scent, or
the dog barking wildly, feral
teeth spread underneath a canopy
of greenery -

when you think you see what
you thought was only a myth, or
so she says;

but she told me
and of all the things she has done
she would not lie to me.

And it comes up in conversation
every once in a while, because
after all this is Bigfoot Country
and if you didn't grow up here
you feel laughable and left out
of the conversation

but us natives weave tales
like old maids - because we
know; because this is
Washington, and this is what
it feels to walk through the
yellowing woods and think you
hear what might only be a myth.

And she says she saw what
could not have been, or rather
smelled it in North Bend,
with the dog salivating, a frothy
mixture of terror, and tantalization,
and it was somewhere in the woods
beside her, those eyes - beading, broken,
savage in the woods

all around her.

But she told me,
and of all the things she has done
she would not lie to me.