The title does more than label the poem. It is also the grammatical subject of the first line: "A Bigfoot poem would have nothing whatsoever to do with, you know — those interlopers." So the poem never gives us a Bigfoot poem. It describes one that hasn't been written, and it does so mostly by saying what it would refuse. The speaker's "you know" and "I suppose" make this a casual, half-amused tone, as if a friend were explaining what a certain kind of poem should and shouldn't be. The "interlopers" are never named. Judging by the rest of the poem, they are the people who barge in on the creature's woods, whether hunters, gawkers or sensation-seekers, and the poem declines to give them any space.
What it offers instead is a catalogue of small sounds: "a cold mountain stream," "a rock shifting in the current," "the too-loud splash of a trout," "loose bark / ticking in the wind." The details are quiet, and the listening is intense. "Too-loud" is the telling phrase, because it suggests a creature for whom every noise is a possible alarm. Then comes the saw-whet owl, whose "discrete / requests for clarification" are a lovely joke. An owl's repeated calls become polite, patient questions, "that kind of persistence." The spelling "discrete" means separate, which fits calls sounded one at a time, though it also echoes "discreet," which suits a poem about staying hidden.
The poem swerves in its middle. Until then the poem has been "it," but now a "you" appears: "the hush / when the crickets suddenly stop / & your pulse makes such a racket / you're sure it will give you away." We are suddenly inside the body of the one who hides. The hard k sounds of "crickets" and "racket" jab at the hush, and the heartbeat seems to drum through the line. Then come "you whose knees / are incapable of bending, / whose feet grip as much of the ground / as they can still lay claim to." The stiff knees may recall the lumbering walk of popular Bigfoot imagery, though that is an inference. The last phrase matters more. "Still lay claim to" implies a territory that has been shrinking, so the creature's fear carries a sense of loss as well as fright. The reader is asked to stand on that ground and feel how little of it is left.
The shape of the poem supports this. There is no rhyme and no regular meter, only short, breathy free-verse lines that break at moments of suspense. "It would have" is repeated like a spell, and the whole piece is built from conditional verbs ("would have," "would cry"). The poem keeps promising itself instead of declaring itself, which suits a subject that is never quite seen. The ampersand, used twice, adds to the feeling of a quick, informal note jotted down on the move.
The ending turns the poem into the creature itself: "It would cry, that poem, / possibly for joy. / It would hiss." The "possibly" is characteristic. The poem will not say for certain what the creature feels, so it keeps its distance. Yet the last word is blunt and animal. A hiss can be a warning, a fear response or a refusal to be handled. The sibilance has been gathering all along in "splash," "suddenly," "sure," "such" and "hush," and it finally arrives as a sound. A poem that began by declaring what it wouldn't do now behaves like the thing it describes, wary and suddenly dangerous.
The poem matters because it takes a subject usually treated as a joke or a tabloid curiosity and treats it with humor and tenderness together. It suggests that the honest way to write about something elusive is to attend to what surrounds it and let it stay unseen. That idea applies well beyond Bigfoot. Some things, whether wild animals, strong feelings or poems themselves, are best approached by listening closely, and they may hiss if you try to catch them.