The Purpose of Deer

The Purpose of Deer

"I can understand God's purpose for most animals, but what is the purpose of deer?"

Julie at Lake Alice

I. April, 1983

I carry my knees like broken sparrows to Garth's kitchen.

Garth whirls up milk and honey for ulcer burn,

picks gravel from knee meat, bandages elbows.

I beat out droning Saturday morning litany:

don't know, can't remember, never saw before . . .

I have stopped even pretending emotions;

I'm no longer shuffling that old dance.

I am a single mechanical note

sounding on the current of that hot juice.

I am beyond shame or gratitude,

beyond the whole writhing maggoty mass of my humanity.

I have leapt clear of the wreckage of heart and mind;

I hang suspended above it on an amber thread.

Wrist scars, cigarette burns, childhood bruises,

all B&O railroad quaint from this height.

My hated father and I have never been so alike

or so separate;

we are identical objects under glass.

This is completely predictable tragedy

in glaring black and white.

The buzz saw edges closer.

Cut to the heroine struggling.

Her mouth opens, but you hear nothing.

II. September, 1983

A new movement has begun. There is no score.

The ripe moon of this season exposes

real heroes without names

riding in and out of my white rooms.

I claim to be rebuilding myself,

stretching my limbs at this transformed barre,

but I begin to see the gift

these people slyly leave on the counter

while I talk, talk, talk from the other room.

The gift is a secret about who we are.

It is this.

Clinging to the hem of existence,

dragged by gravity,

logic pointing the other way,

we push upward.

We do not turn on each other like beasts

but share bread and bear witness.

Under the milk-filled moon

we do not howl for the dead,

but dance.