Around the pot-bellied stove
he listened to them boast about
their deer-kill, each reaching for
the most believable scale--pounds
and points increasing with each telling.
He never had much to say,
never had much heart for killing.
On the way home he thought of how
the deer had chewed his corn to shreds
and trampled his tomato patch,
then floated away into the summer night
while he watched, mesmerized,
Crotched in the fork of white oak,
he fingered the barrel of his Winchester,
steel-blue, shining in winter moonlight.
Waiting for the forest curtain to fold away,
he traced finite lines along
the garden row until a doe appeared,
tripped light doe-hooves on crusted snow.
Another and another slipped in,
surveyed the spent field.
It seemed as though his hands froze
to the gun before the moment came,
when the stag emerged, his ten point crown, a velvet
rack, his sable-sentry eyes
glowing in the gray dawn.
On
his way home he weighed the buck,
counted the
faultless points, fingered his
un-fired gun and
smiled at the memory
of the stag and
white-flagged tails
dipping back into
the forest.
