Trapping

When I was younger, Tom R. and I trapped muskrats one winter on Spring Creek just behind my Uncle Milt's house. It was a very interesting winter. This poem emerged from those memories:

Trapping

When snows first whiten
the fall straw stubble
and barren potato fields,
I pull my muskrat traps
from the 16 penny nails, half buried
in the side of the old barn.
I place the traps side by side
on a 4" x 6" pine plank.
I turn them over and over,
fingering each one with leather-gloved hand,
like pictures in an album
until I remember where
I placed them last season:
under the tall cottonwood
in front of the half-hidden worn trail,
leading into the brush-covered mud bank.
I press each lever with my right heel,
holding tightly, and gently
locking the spring in place.
The jaws gape open at my feet
while I step back to test
their strength and quickness.
I reach into my goose-down jacket,
pull out a creek pebble,
the size of a cat-eyed marble.
From three feet above the trap,
I drop the pebble.
The jaws snap shut before I can
draw another breath.
I test the jaws twice more
until they are ready
for the murky waters
that run beneath the weeping willows,
through the giant cottonwoods
while the muskrats roam up and down
the creek like Titania dancing
under a full Moon,
not heeding where they step.