b.

Sleeping in the Wilderness
by Maurice Manning

No matter how well you dress the hide
a buffalo rug will always smell like buffalo:
it is a rank odor and wild, charged with old
glands and cud and the memory of running ten
winters, the last two blind. So you take your bed
in this way, raking dry leaves into a grave-sized
mound beneath you, pulling the mossy cloak
upon you and you spit out the last bitter cinders
from your fire and submerge your head, feeling
the dank fur on your face. And you try to breathe.
What good are the dim stars on such nights?
They only make heaven seem colder and farther
away. So you rekindle the dream about Rebecca,
in which the two of you are resting in the shade
of a sycamore and you skip a rock for her across
the river, and as you prepare to skip another,
she grabs your rough hand and puts it in her hair.
Then she lays her generous bones next to yours.
In the morning, you wrap your rug around you,
check your powder, rub some ashes on your teeth
and go to the creek where you wash all traces of night
from your face. You walk until walking warms you,
then you fold the rug and lash it to your horse
and you keep going to the next blue lick and the next,
the taste of salt already on your tongue, a precious
grain of civilization clinging to your brutal frame
like a pocket watch or a lock of hair; but you are looking
for an elk, or a bear, sniffing the air for musk.