Scoping a Wild Pig

by Charles Cantrell

My finger is air, and my brain
is Jello, which is why I cannot pull
the trigger to shoot a pregnant sow
in thorny underbrush. Did the moon
or the stars make me feel this way?
Or some Freudian stuff about manhood
misunderstood? Or my reading of Kant
and others on morality? I’m not sure.
I’d like to think hogs have souls, and yet,
and why am I out here in the woods
in the first place, except for a chance
to see if I have the guts or not?

Who will care if I kill a wild pig?
My thumb is ice, my eye is locked shut.
My hunter pal is mad, but guesses
I am a pussy. So we don’t drag a 200–pound sow
through the trees, and we’ll eat no ham.
And soon, all things being even, a piglet
will slip alive to the earth — a creature
with feelings, with a soul or not,
free to run and eat and fight and fuck
its way toward its own eternity.