On a dark February day, animals began talking to me: horses, emus, vultures, crows, coyotes, in a wilderness that accepts death, burned out or slowly decaying circular minds, living in the present, not as wizards, brujos, or ghosts, but understanding what we can never understand, tugging my sweater's zipper up to the teeth of worn out mythologies, slipping on the valley's broken pavement. Red clay and split boulders loosened by last night's rain, sit by the side of the road, engaging the gods for future epochs.