Waking

It was dusk, the light hesitating

and a murmer in the wind, when the deer, exhausted,

turned to look at me, an arrow in its side.

Though I pity dreamers, taking a thread

and weaving it upon the loom of Self—the secret,

gaudy, wonderful new cloth—, I will tell the end of the story.

His shoulder was torn, the joint held by one sinew,

which I severed with the blade of the arrow,

so when he ran there were no impediments.

The black dogs that followed were swifter,

their barking ancient, despicable.

As he fell, his chest turned to breastplate,

his one powerful arm covered with pagan signs.

Nearly stupid in my waiting for what would happen next,

each breath propelling me and him toward dust,

I woke, the sheets soaked, heart fluttering—:

When death comes into the sleeping room as through a tiny hole,

like a rent in the Covenant, it hurts.

Source: love and scorn: New and Selected Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2000)