Tick Bomb

A poem

Tripping off-trail through lilac fields,
rattlesnakes, gleaming poison oak, 
we blunder into a tick bomb, 
a dense cluster of bad thoughts, which
seek out boggy pockets in our
brains, those warm and secret places 
just beyond frantic, primate reach.
"We could cleanse them of disease like 
Western Fence Lizards if we’d just
stop screaming!” I tell Dayn, but he
thrashes about in a dry creek, 
grunting, weeping, scrubbing his skin
raw in its wash basin of dirt.
Needle-edged oak leaves tattoo grim
messages from the future on 
his bare chest, but I don't believe 
he's capable of suicide. 
“Not all lions in these mountains
wear GPS collars,” I say,
lighting a Camel backwards and
smoking straight acetate filter. 
“But there is excellent data 
associated with the deaths 
of those cats which do.” And at that 
we laugh and cry and laugh and cry 
and claw at all the crawling ticks
until the sun falls like a stone
into the ocean below us.