Her Life Is On This Table and Other Poems

trophy and depart

  With its antlers dangling low

  Kind of gruesome, but hey!

  That’s what hunters do with their kill.

  Gotta keep things realistic.

  I’ve got to get the hunter and the maiden together.

  Let’s see …

  The stag could wander into the garden,

  start in eating the herbs and flowers.

  The maid cannot shoo it away.

  Then the hunter shoots! Fwit!

  Dead deer in the peonies.

  A medieval meet-cute.

  Blood corrupts the chaste white lilies

  Gore now waters sage and thyme

  But a poet with the sillies

  Might just be a greater crime!

  OK. Garden scene not working.

  Hmmm …

  I remember one dark night

  Dad shook my brother and I awake,

  dressed us, two boys half asleep,

  and took us coon hunting.

  Raccoons.

  We were in a dark woods at night

  with his hunting friends.

  They all shone flashlights into the trees.

  Whenever they saw two yellow eyes

  reflecting the light, they’d blast away,

  and their coon dogs would make a great howl.

  I don’t know why Dad bagged raccoons.

  Mom wouldn’t cook them.

  He never ate them.

  And he wasn’t Davy Crockett.

  He didn’t need a coonskin cap.

  Well … so my hunter’s tracking stags in a garden.

  Stupid.

  Maybe I should get the maiden to the forest instead.

  Maybe to find that one last flower

  that doesn’t grow in her garden.

  This last request from dying mother:

  Just one rose of purest red

  In her youth a handsome lover

  Lay beside her in the clover

  Gave her roses; now he’s dead

  Hmmm…

  Kind of lost my train of thought.

  Lost my taste for guns, too, eventually.

  Really, I’d rather grow roses.

  My brother didn’t, though.

  He buys up guns when he sees a bargain —

  more of them than he knows what to do with.

  He never really took much to hunting.

  His home’s in a clearing surrounded by woods,

  his neighbors not very close by.

  He nailed an old trash can lid to a tree

  and he shoots at that with his guns.

  Just like a stick in the river, same idea.

  But back to the poem:

  Comes the maiden to the forest

  For the rose she cannot grow

  She would place in mother’s hand

  A rose beside her wedding band

  Small lives end with little show

  But how to get a rose garden into the woods?

  Maybe some pheasant ate some roses,

  flew off into the forest,

  and pooped out the seeds in a glade.

  Can roses grow from seeds?

  I’ll Google that tomorrow.

  Sheltered is this heav’n-grown garden

  In a forest glade unknown

  Planted to the Lord’s own plan

  Tended by an angel’s hand

  There are finest roses grown

  Now to crank up the tragedy.

  A sick mother won’t be enough.

  Perhaps the hunter, tracking the stag,

  sees some movement, looses an arrow,

  and hits the girl in her breast

  just as she spots her perfect red rose.

  It’s kind of like “Polly Von”, the old folk song —

  a hunter shoots an arrow at a swan,

  but kills his girlfriend Polly instead.

  I’ll use a stag instead of a swan —

  Less poetic, but more meat

  and a better head to mount afterwards.

  I’ll call the maiden Ann Rag, after Raggedy Ann.

  Poor Ann Rag, shot for a stag

  Not the trophy he’d desired

  Still, her head was more than fair

  Many good points she had there

  And a rack he’d much admired

  Rats! My mind’s drifting again.

  Scratch that last stanza.

  Once, hunting with my dad,

  I shot at a stick across the river

  with my rifle, while I was alone.

  I missed.

  Then I heard a sort of shrill crying sound

  in the woods beyond the river.

  For days I was haunted by the thought

  that my stray bullet had wounded some girl

  lost to my sight among the trees.

  She was crying in pain

  while I slunk away, looking for Father,

  telling myself again and again

  that it was some bird I’d heard

  giving out a warning cry.

  Today I fully believe that it was a bird.

  I only half believed it then.

  So our maid’s in a garden in the forest this time.

  The hunter shoots! Fwit!

  Mommy don’t get no flower.

  As he nears his aimed-at prey

  Shock and sorrow grow within

  A rose now brings his tears to flood

  A red rose made from maiden’s blood

  And his arrow is the stem

  ‘Course that’s the problem with weapons —

  guns even more than bows.

  If you have them, you always, always

  kind of want to use them.

  And you often hit what you’re aiming at.

  It’s just you can’t predict what,

  in some sudden blunder or dark mood,

  you might be aiming at tomorrow.

  Guns are a little like chocolate bars.

  They’re nice to think about,

  kind of tempting, a little addictive.

  I put them away, out of sight,

  and I can resist them for days,

  but they’re always there,

  always calling me.

  I keep chocolate bars in the cupboard,

  but I’ve never kept a gun.

  So, in the “Polly Von” song,

  the hunter is pretty torn up.

  “I’d always intended

  that she be my wife!” he wails.

  Well, I’m sure he intended

  doing something with her.

  Blue as monkshood are her eyes

  Corn-silk-yellow is her hair

  He stops the bleeding with his fingers

  While his gaze upon her lingers

  On her features, young and fair

  So now he’s smitten by a dying girl,

  bleeding out her last drops.

  It’s kind of like that old movie Laura,

  only this guy’s not the detective,

  he’s the killer.

  The last time I stayed with my brother,

  he was troubled by raccoons.

  They were eating the food in his dog pen

  and digging up his plants.

  He set out some traps.

  The raccoon goes inside after food,

  and can’t get back out again.

  The next day his trap had a tenant,

  cowering back in a corner.

  My brother picked up the trap,

  got in his car, and drove down the road.

  He released it far from his house.

  The next day, Sunday, another one caught;

  but this one growled and hissed and clawed.

  My brother went back to the house, for a rifle,

  and he shot that animal dead.

  Shot it right there in the trap.

  Then he walked off into the trees

  with the trap and his gun and a shovel.

  My brother’s no hunter, as I have said.

  A man of g
ood humor, not hasty or cruel.

  A man who that day saw something dangerous;

  and he saw, too, an easy solution.

  A guy with a gun and a shovel,

  and a quiet woods he could bury things in.

  Would he’d never trailed the stag

  Would his bow had split in twain

  Would he’d never seen her face —

  Cruel end to so much grace —

  Would his tears brought life again!

  So the song’s hunter goes back to daddy,

  wailing about poor dead Polly Von.

  The next day he’s off by a lake,

  still sobbing away,

  when a swan glides by.

  And he just watches it.

  Makes no attempt to shoot it.

  Somehow I think the swans were safe

  around this hunter from then on.

  He probably took up shooting pheasants.

  Well, my hunter’s torn up, too;

  full of regret and despair

  and frustrated sexual desires.

  He’s not had much rest,

  and he’s not at his best:

  In evening light by flowing Arden

  Antlers lift with sudden start

  The stag now sees the hunter’s quiver,

  Bow and arrows, wash downriver

  Never more to pierce a heart

  My hero is long past the point

  where he can toss his bow in the river

  and trot off to join Hunter’s Anonymous.

  The guy is a bit suicidal by now.

  It’s all quite pathetic and very dramatic —

  and damned if it isn’t long past my bed time!

  The hour has come, ready or not,

  to drown this whole thing in the river.

  Beneath dark waters raven locks

  Swirl ’round coat of forest green

  Two grey eyes no longer weeping

  Coldly all their sorrows keeping

  No more is the hunter seen

  The End.

  I’ll read it over later, and kick myself twice

  for being a fraud and a failure,

  and mostly for being a fool.

  Best to save that exercise for the morning.

  Right now I’m just thinking sleep, and also

  it’s a good thing I don’t own a gun.

  August 28, 2013

  Gnat Theology

  While walking this morning, admiring the sky,

  A gnat collided with my left eye.

  Given the bug was quite small and that

  The world is quite large, then why did the gnat

  Pick out that one exact spot to fly at?

  The best explanation that I could advance

  Was putting it down to some random chance.

  But it felt more personal, like there could be

  Some powerful being that I can’t see

  Aiming that damned little bug right at me!

  I could invent a whole theology

  Were a God sits in judgment on all He can see;

  A heaven of wonders where righteous folk lie;

  A hell far below where the dubious fry;

  Just to explain a gnat in my eye.

  My gnat catechism would draw back a curtain,

  Put shine on existence, make life less uncertain.

  But if God sees all sinners in every nation

  Then pokes at me with a small irritation,

  I’m thinking it’s certain He’s got me marked down

  For realms not of glory, but realms underground.

  I don’t mind a gamble if odds are the same,

  But these dice are loaded, so why play the game?

  I’ll wipe at the gnats with my