22 April 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 1

When I First See the Dead Deer

by MARY WALKER GRAHAM

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.