A Bigfoot Walks Away

A bigfoot walks away. It disappears
into thick trees. Lots of vertical lines,
an artist might say. Lines blend together.
And lots of muted colors, an artist
might say, too. Olives, umbers. Colors blend
together, too, when they all look like gray.
Glaring, washed-out brights from the sun above.
Lost, indecipherable darks below
in shadows of tree trunks and undergrowth.
Reality – at least the visual
cortex version of the real – breaks apart
like pics in Antonioni’s “Blowup”
or process shots in Hitchcock’s final films.

I’ve never heard of a bigfoot sighting
where a person ran into the forest,
where a person chased after the bigfoot.

Has cinema so shaped our consciousness
that we live real life as if we’re in seats
and don’t even consider getting up
to chase the images in front of us?
Or is the experience of seeing
a bigfoot so perpendicular to
real life that we feel as separate from it
as we do from a Hollywood movie?

If I ever see a bigfoot I’ll try
to tackle it. I’ll try to drag it down.

Of course, fairy-lore is full of stories
where humans get dragged to Magonia
and disappear into the fairy realm.
But if I ever do see a bigfoot
I’ll still try to grab it and drag it down.
Either I’ll drag it down to here, my ground,
or it’ll drag me down to there, its ground.

I imagine that is the risk you take
whenever you get up out of your seat.
You never know where the scene will take you.
You become part of what looks like a film
to the people who do not leave their seats.