Artifice
Poorly shot perhaps by a shy boy taken
Hunting for the first and last time, I find
What remains of the deer years later where
It finally fell, dead in the door of another season.
These bones, staves in winter's anti-still,
Bequeath to the aging air their calcium…
Stop the poem a minute. If I'm being honest
(I try to be honest), there is no poetry
In these woods. That's why I left a house
Full of books of it and drove here.
Let's start over.
On a whim I went off trail and almost tripped
Over a rib cage. The cage holds nothing captive
Because it isn't a cage. And the woodpeckers
Aren't carpenters with hangover headaches
In the scaffolding of the canopy,
They're woodpeckers and they're hungry.
But all this aside, I think it can be said
With some degree of certainty that somewhere
In time a boy is closing his eyes precisely
When they should be open.
Also, that it's fucking cold.