Cynthia Belmont Our Moose Our moose showed up like a chunk of wilderness detached from the flickering October woods, clopping across the bridge over the ravine, past the Student Center—a brown piece of nature puzzle someone lost while lost in thought, so what remained was an antler-shaped hole in the middle of our understanding. Moose don't live on this campus or anywhere near. They live to the east or maybe the west or south; there may be twelve left here in Wisconsin or leaving for Michigan or coming back via Minnesota—who can say? What was he thinking, a young bull moose loitering outside Wheeler Hall? Philosophy, Languages, Sociology, History. Psychology, Chemistry, Biology. He muscled right by it all, the linebacker shoulders casually massive in his shiny suit, nostrils huffing a fog clear to the parking lot at the soccer field, where his hooves clacked a path between cars. The scoreboard still read 0-0 after he passed despite the wild clapping inside us. When he left, we rushed after him, filming what we could, into the early dusk, out through the doors of the mind. He might get the brain worm that has lately been doing them in. He might go on to meet another moose. Why did he make us grieve? He was no polar bear treading water in the warming seas. Why did he give us such joy? Wherever he is headed now—Hurley, North York, the pine barrens, the rocky edge of the lake, Canada, farther—Moose Was Here.

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