Poem: Deer Season

 

Deer Season

 

gunfire,

prelude to a last heartbeat,

belches as i clutch zinc moss,

praying to a pale atmosphere,

such floating ribs.

 

maybe the gunfire

thumping my cochlea

won't know me from a trunk.

best not to be a mammal,

rather a cipher of xylem.

 

fleet wind

sprays the spruce with hissed jazz,

so they shimmy and wiggle,

a gleeful coniferous tribe,

unfazed by yet another ‘deer season’

in lawless 'washington county.'

 

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12/24/23 ... "such" replaces longer phrase ... 

My brother's birthday.  He would've been 54, a far better person than me.  At least he and my father didn't live to see democracy so in peril, withering around the world, as well as here in the US.  They both believed in democracy, that it could improve and spread.  

I, too, believe it can.  Though the odds are vitiated by the rise of fascism.   Humanity, it seems, has learned little from WWII.  Abuse and Fear continue to pinion the wings of fairness, equality, compassion, and dignity.  

Fascists view the world as primarily an ugly, shallow place, and see little value in human life.  Corrupt generals shovel untrained soldiers like coal to die in heaps on the battlefield.  Money and power are the goal.  A facade of beauty is the best one can achieve.  

I think, though, that a longer life, living this way, even if you can manage it, is of less wealth than a shorter life lived as an honest person who sees fascism for what it is--the maintenance of a human ant colony held together by fear, corruption, prejudice, hierarchy, fanaticism and violence--and who does what they can to avoid becoming such an ant.