a poem in my pocket

Inside a rustic cabin deep in Yukon territory, an old miner seasoned a simmering pot of venison stew.

Stroking his grizzled chin, he thought about the majestic elk herd he’d encountered migrating through a mountain meadow late that afternoon: one dominant young bull calling a large group of cows and calves to follow. After the herd disappeared over a ridge, a straggler came stumbling out of the trees: an old bull, wild-eyed and abandoned. Somehow he’d felt a kindred spirit to the animal…

Later, eerie howls of wolves on their twilight hunt woke him. He stirred the fire’s embers before going outside in the dark to check on his pack mule. Under waning moon, he was fumbling with the cabin latch on his return when far away an interrupted cry of the lone elk was heard as the hungry pack took him down.

An exercise in “prosery” for dVerse where Bjorn challenges us to write flash fiction of 144 words (exactly!) and include the phrase (from Robert Frost) in italics above.