22 April 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 1
When I First See the Dead Deer
When I first see the dead deer, I think
Hope and Remembrance.
It's not the cluster of pinks I'd wanted,
not the first sight of the first crocus,
but a bouquet nonetheless.
Touching the furred foreleg where it juts
from the broken ribcage, it's
How perfectly still the leg lies, and
What a strange arrangement—how like a stem
it is for the whorl of bones and hair,
just uncovered by the melting snow.
Later when I smell it on my hands,
I touched a man in love, and
What strange confessions the dead make.
Look how the blooms lie frozen still,
in the not-quite spring, in the shapes
of tubers, rhizomes, bones.
About the author:
Mary Walker Graham is a bartender and a cofounder of Rope-a-Dope Collaborative, a printing co-op in South Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has also appeared in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and The Alembic.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Mary Walker Graham at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 7, No. 1, where "When I First See the Dead Deer" ran on April 22, 2007. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
