Deer At Dusk

From my mother’s womb

I fell into a meadow

Standing finally on shaky legs

In the dying light of first dusk

I nursed briefly then

Was left to lay in a patch

Of woods overlooking your

House where you saw me born

Many years passed between us

You watched with something like wonder

As I took a mate and my

Family grew as large as yours

My antlers twisted and branched

I licked at the salt blocks scattered

Walked the perimeter of your home

With a growing trust for man

One day the air broke with a sound like thunder

From which I felt a piercing in my chest

Took three steps and a sickening warmth

Began to flow from a hole I had never known

As I lay dying in that wood

My glazed eyes beheld you

Grabbing me by my antlers

As though you were weighing my worth

Dragging me through the snow

My body no longer working

I was pulled out of this world

As violently as I entered

Hung upside down I was

Beheaded and bled into a bucket

My hide shorn from my body

I made a meal that lasted you all winter

Now my dried pelt is splayed

Across your floor in a

Pose my legs could

Never naturally achieve

And from my perch on your wall

There is a sliver of window through which

At dusk when there is no glare off my still

Eyes I can forever see the meadow of my birth