To Kill a Deer

Into the changes of autumn brush

the doe walked, and the hide, head, and ears

were the tinsel browns. They made her.

I could not see her. She reappeared, stuffed with apples,

and I shot her. Into the pines she ran,

and I ran after. I might have lost her,

seeing no sign of blood or scuffle,

but felt myself part of the woods,

a woman with a doe’s ears, and heard her

dying, counted her last breaths like a song

of dying, and found her dying.

I shot her again because her lungs rattled like castanets,

then poked her with the gun barrel

because her eyes were dusty and unreal.

I opened her belly and pushed the insides

like rotted fruit into a rabbit hole,

skinned her, broke her leg joints under my knee,

took the meat, smelled the half-digested smell

that was herself. Ah, I closed her eyes.

I left her refolded in some briars

with the last sun on her head

like a benediction, head tilted on its axis

of neck and barren bone; head bent

wordless over a death, though I heard

the night wind blowing through her fur,

heard riot in the emptied head.

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