Starvation and Testosterone

Oct 2 2019

The deer are in rut.

A big buck

lumbers out to the road,

his blood up

the stink of lust

rising off his hide.

Either in pursuit

or hungry for battle

he is single-minded, oblivious to traffic;

a magnificent beast

whose eyes are bright, intense

fixed directly ahead.

On this crumbling ribbon of road

winding through the woods

somewhere roughly north

no place in particular.

Where beyond the veil of trees

throughout the trackless forest

high dramas

of regicide

survival

mercenary sex

are endlessly performed.

In a gloomy fall

before the season of hunger

when the lame and weak are culled.

When a pregnant doe

will paw through the snow's hard surface

for grasses, stems, twigs.

Where the body of a regal buck

lies frozen,

hollowed-out by wolves

and squabbling strutting crows.

Who have eaten through the anus

to its steamy nourishing gut,

and who will return

to gnaw its bones.

Was he the king, roughly deposed?

Or a pretender

who seized the bloody throne?

Because both may die,

starvation and testosterone

exacting their toll.

In spring, a successor is born.

But meanwhile, the roads are safe

and deer huddle for warmth.

And now

   —   except for the wolves

whose electrifying howls proclaim

territory

solidarity

their exuberance for life   —

the forest

in the darkness beyond the trees

is a vast haunting stillness.

Its small dramas

are playing out like yours and mine,

unobserved, and quietly

contained within our minds;

the triumph, and exquisite suffering

to which the world is oblivious

but are all there is to us.

I sometimes contemplate the cumulative suffering in the world: the terrible universe of pain in the small brain of every 4-legged creature, in each tiny insect's minuscule node of nervous tissue; and the deafening chorus of supplication rising up to heaven every moment of every day. We have measurements for matter. But spiritual agony and the scorching electricity of physical pain have no scale or reference point. They are infinite, but also ineffable. How do we even account for the weight of pain in our current concept of physics, where everything is supposed to be not only quantifiable, but conserved?

I think that's what I'm trying to get at in the final stanza, and that's the only meaningful part of the poem.

The rest was fun to write, and I suppose acts as a more expansive metaphor before the poem narrows in on this more private drama. Still, it is not only merely descriptive, but another tiresome deer poem. (And probably evidence that I've watched one too many of National Geographic Channel's Animal Fight Night!) A deer poem, which – like dogs and weather – seem to be my fallback tropes: that is, when the mood to write strikes but no particular inspiration has taken me, the things that easily come to mind.