Ruminant

What happens to a heart after death?

It pounds around the rib cage,

at last leaps through the sternum

into the menacing wood.

Grows a coat of fur, thickening around the neck.

Becomes crepuscular,

cannot bear to be seen.

Crumens beneath its beautiful eyes

secrete waxy tears,

its four-chambered stomach barely taking in sustenance.

From spring on its antlers grow an inch each day,

velvety at first as they emerge

but hardening to woody bone for the anger of the autumn rut.

At times the stag tips back his majestic crown;

a Christ with hands nailed up, he bellows to the heavens,

then sheds his antlers and begins again. And again.