Moose I Have Known

Brooklin poet Pat Smith says he’s met several moose, but not one like this. Photo by Unsplash.

By Pat Smith

This is the land of the moose

Though I haven’t met one in person yet

If you don't count the monumental head

Mounted in the Kneisel Recital Hall

Most familiar to me have been moose on TV

First was Mister Moose, puppet friend of Captain Kangaroo

Small for a moose, with a pleasant demeanor

You could only see him from the neck up

Looming much larger in my moose experience

Was Bullwinkle J. Moose

Kindly, fun-loving cartoon sidekick

To heroic Rocky The Flying Squirrel

Bullwinkle was shaggy and walked upright

Maybe he was not so bright 

Or maybe he was pulling my leg

He spoke in puns and satirical jokes 

I only half understood I held him to my heart 

A talisman of time before my parents broke up 

At another order of moose magnitude is 

Elizabeth Bishop’s tremendous moose cow

“High as a church

Homely as a house”

Who stops the night bus to Boston “with a jolt” 

And gives it’s hot hood a numinous sniff

A moose angel, a moose bodhisattva

She offers the sleepy travelers an experience

Of the Moose Sublime

–Pat Smith lives in Brooklin. His most recent book, “You Are Your Own Suitcase and Other Poems,” was published in 2025. He teaches yoga at the Blue Hill YMCA.

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