after Lynne Knight’s, THE SEVERING
I sit on an antique chair
with wooden spindle legs,
as I read poems of love,
and broken relationships
with death creeping in
the same as I remember:
Our Doberman Pinscher
lifts her feet like a horse
who carries her master
of alleged noble breeding—
the family dog prances
to the upper clover lawn
with her mouth strapped
around the leg of a deer.
Horror strikes! as I see
a furry stick with hooves,
when my mother rips away
the limb without a body.
She searches the property
for the creature’s remains,
as my grammar school eyes
take in the rotten flesh—
bones scattered about
with tufts of fur bleeding
a stench into the summer air,
now etched in my psyche.
So when this fatal odor enters
the cleaves of my breath
I remember the deer going
back into the earth,
and look around me,
for death is not far away.
