Thursday, April 25, 2013

Walt Whitman 150 Poetry Contest Award Winner


  "...there was a child went forth every day;
and the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;” ~ Walt Whitman

there is a deer in me
   so I am told
doe eyes, moist and wide
   tender listening eyes
alert, yet often avert
   acquaintance
a fragile fawn
   curled in a spotted C
along the edge
   of a forest-lined road

there is a deer in me
   of spindly grace, innocent
so I am told
   by a woman long ago
who caught me in her lusty headlights
   a stark and raucous invasion
a barbed wire intrusion
   on my leafy moon-lit life
she insisted I expose a downy side
   my underbelly to her, for her
to spy, to pet, to own, but she
   could not perceive

there is a deer in me
   only to be verged upon
with open palm and cautious step
   only a wish for possibility
of a nuzzle.  She did not distinguish
   she could not see the deer in me
wary and alarmed
   vigilant as the antlered buck
who knows exactly when to retreat.

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