Two Deer

For L.E.

Again, Loren, the middle of August

finds me aghast with how little I've done. The swallows

fledged in their muddy nest above the yard-lamp

over a month ago and flew away.

At least they accomplished something. I

can claim no similar achievement.

Even the hay fared better than I: it grew-

drenched in three weeks' rain-and finally

was cut. I know, like me, you've felt that vague,

illicit desire to be less

than human: perhaps to be a fox

or one of the steers in our pasture, nosing a fencepost,

chewing a handful of grass, achieving nothing.

Accomplishment, I fear, is a human invention,

designed to keep the likes of you

and me in a state of anxiety

or joy. Where did we find our need to build

edifices of words to prove our worth,

as if such structures were a "stay against

confusion," yes, but also against

oblivion, waste, and ruin? You

have known all three, and more. I think of you

thumping the floor to signal to your mother-

your mother, deaf and dumb-or running away

from the woman she'd become: a mad,

wild Fury chasing her son

across a cornfield. You say you cannot recall

whether you laughed at her. But did you see

yourself as her in thirty years, a grown

man, fronting the taunting faces?

Perhaps achievement is a house,

a sturdy house, immune to ridicule.

It seems that I've been building such a house

for years, as though I'd had no other aim

than to avoid becoming one

whom insolent sons might jeer and shake

a stick at. Nobler purposes we have,

I'm sure. But August is disintegrating,

and tonight I feel inclined to let it go.

It was only yesterday I lay

in the hammock, watching the light go out

of the hawthorns on the hill. I heard, behind me,

a little noise, and then I saw the deer-

young; quick ears; dark eyes-not twenty feet

away. I wish you had seen them, Loren;

but if words are good for anything

they are right for re-articulating what

the world has put together, bone by bone.

I write to tell you that I saw two deer.

For a moment, they and I were still.