The Complex Ritual of Tanning Hides

Conjuring a way with Skincraft

It starts with slaughter, as most ancient rituals do. Slaughter by car, the industrial kiss goodnight. Or by bullet shot from shadowed space. Or by knife opening the blood-way for their hearts to pour out into this world. The endless mystery of Movement moving away, to somewhere else. The stilling of all those vibrant swirling breaths and beats and churning of food into muscle, the star spark fading out of the eyes, going where? Even when, especially when, these animals are slaughtered in ways that are not honored, or recognized, speeding violently past in behemoth vehicles that separate the drivers from the act. Or hunters blind with callousness, who cannot see the mother, the sister, the daughter in the doe whose brain they explode. It is especially then that we seek to exalt the Dead One, to use our poetry as spells to wrap the act of being killed in cloaks of gold, that they are recognized for their irreplaceable sacrifice, that their death be seen and witnessed as the Holy thing that it is, beyond the reach of human understanding, immeasurable.

Maybe the ceremony starts so long ago, when the raccoon who is hit on the road was born into this place, and the driver destined to kill him started walking their way towards that day. A long, twisting dance as they move closer towards each other, so many small decisions and nudges and chance that all pull them closer together. Until that moment of collision, the two explode into each other in a burst of absolute finality. Even if the human does not know, they are intrinsically, forever linked to that dead raccoon. To his family. To that spot in the road. They may continue driving away, without a pause. But that entanglement is knotted. What a thought to think. That we are bound to everything we’ve ever killed.

And how many bodies have we prayer over, put a bit of food on the tongue, offered a sip of water for the long journey? The last meal in this flesh. It is the etiquette of something so old I can’t see it clearly, but I know in my soul that we must do it. The songs we sing, the love in our hearts, the anguish.