Dead Calf Camp

I don’t see it at first, lying prone
on a soft bed of warm brown sugar sand
between mother and father juniper trees
in their lovingly cool shade.

I am too distracted by the beauty of my new camp:
panoramic swirled humps of honeyed Navajo sandstone
dotted with black lava boulders and burnt brown moqui balls.

I am staying in a courtyard of soft Utah earth
that invites me to take off my shoes
though I don’t,
encircled by a a fertile forest of pinyon and junipers
that beckons me to rest in their shade
and I do.

It’s not until I have made my camp here,
settled into its serenity, swallowed its scenery,
that I find the calf, its plush fur still richly brown, though half eaten,
its small head reaching upward in its final hours.
Toward God? Its Mother? Sunbeams?

I hum my heart to the somber scene,
wondering why there aren’t more dead things in this waterless land.
Yet the calf seems to have chosen this place to die,
on a soft bed of warm brown sugar sand
between mother and father juniper trees
under their lovingly cool shade.