It was late October
and the woods were filled with hunters
so I put on a fluorescent coat
and tied a shock of blue cloth
around my son’s shoulder.
Then we scrambled up a hillside
for a flower
that was no flower
but a carcass
most likely of a young deer
picked bare with little red remaining.
Is it a dinosaur? my son asked. Probably not, I said,
as I pulled him back
toward the overgrown trail.
We carried on through the forest
marveling at the pools of copper needles
the creek of dark water
the sudden snaps of branches
reminding us in our reactions
just how little is separate.
Gregory Wolff is an almost-PhD in philosophy turned organic farmer, writer of fiction, poetry, essays and children’s literature, and very proud father of two enchanted and half-wild children. His writing appears or is forthcoming in Chicago Quarterly Review, EVENT, Prairie Fire, The Moth, Terrain.org, Zone 3, Vassar Review, Writers Resist, and elsewhere.