My Mountain Lion Animal Spirit has Turned into a Scared Elk

To enter the North Fork Café you walk through

an outdoor recreation store.

The store’s not so much geared

to the REI-minded individual

who gets off

on the aroma

of French pressed coffee

and oohs and aahs at beautiful sunsets.

This store is for the person who

thinks the smell of gunpowder

comforts like a lavender scented candle

and would eat the outdoors

to extinction

if hunting weren’t regulated.

At my table

I sit underneath a print

of a hungry mountain lion

jumping onto a scared elk.

My belly immediately

connects with its animal belly spirit.

At this moment I could pounce on

an omelet.

The server brings out

an omelet

that has an odd-looking cheese

oozing out of the corner.

The cook shoots my appetite to death

with a processed rubber cheese slug.

So what if the omelet is fluffy

and comes with fresh fruit on the side?

Oh! The pain of processed cheese!

I feel like a hunter who rips

into an elk

to find cans of SPAM.