Winter Kill

May 17 2020

The dogs keep appearing with bones.

I see them sprawled on the lawn

gnawing on fractured femurs

that end in long narrow spears,

and broken spines

festooned with sharp tiny points

like intricately carved ivories.

They live in the present

with no conception

of injury or risk.

Because a dog on a bone

is oblivious,

to me

weather

death.

But they are good dogs

and let me confiscate their treasures,

staring up sad-eyed

and wet with drool.

A dead deer, somewhere in the woods.

Winter kill.

Or some ravenous pack

who ran it down

in deep wet snow.

Who swarmed its warm twitching body

before it had even expired,

boring in from the anus

to gorge on prized organs

rich with fat.

Wolfing down

its fixed and glossy eyes,

the oleaginous brain

in its white strongbox of bone.

Then the ravens,

cawing and strutting and thrusting their beaks

into its still steaming gut

for whatever entrails remain,

competing with quick little foxes

to gobble-up what's left.

Until the shy scavengers come

and clean-up the rest;

trampled viscera

spilling out,

the red-blooded muscle

of its strong lean legs.

So the well-fed dogs

are left to mine the bones for scraps

crack them for marrow.

It seems a sad end

for a noble animal.

But then, what greater respect can be paid

to a life well-lived

than to have a meaningful death?

To have a purpose, to be of use

instead of scorned

wasted

discarded.

Because we all want to be needed

as much as we need to be loved.

The after-life of a deer,

decomposing

in the thin mineral soil

and forest underbrush.

A spot of green

where new shoots poke up.

A litter of pups

barking hungrily.

And a full nest

of mottled ravens' eggs;

a clutch of glossy black birds

who will fledge in time for summer.

My readers will not believe this, but every time I sit down to write, I'm hoping for a 10 line poem – at most: something slightly oblique, with lots of powerful allusion and innuendo, and a slightly unexpected killer ending that transforms everything that came before. Certainly not something long, linear, or narrative. Short and sweet and enticingly ambiguous.

And, of course, something fresh; rather than my tired old go-tos.

So what do I come up with today? A long, linear, narrative poem about animals. Dogs and deer, no less. Again!

This seems to be my style, like it or not. Maybe what I'm good at, even though it's not really what I most want. I'm still waiting for that great short poem. In the meantime, I can only hope that whatever readers I have are content to go the distance with one more long, direct, plain-speaking poem that says what it says.