by Narmadhaa Sivaraja
she first saw the old stag several years before they’d met
in a gravel driveway she comes across a part of this carcass can’t look away
can’t keep looking without wonder
takes wide steps to greet him hovers a pulse and then
plunks down stiff knee and all to squat to peer closely this need to witness skull to skull
to claim somehow these familiar remains among a stranger’s weedy wind row trees
today she summons old stag’s presence she unfolds the dog-eared pages of questions
she kept she thanks him for bearing what all she’ll never know of \not now\
she searches for words like browse and forbs
and hard and soft mast instead that he would have loved to have heard she draws
evergreen leaves and clover, chicory and vetch and buckwheat, oats, alfalfa and rye
she gathers a great pile of last year’s acorns and this year’s early summer seeds
and berries in honor of him and tonight’s post-solstice strawberry full moon
she arranges them on a bed of mosses and mushrooms on stones themselves quilted
with ageless lichen in every possible form of filament and pigment she makes
a basket of her arms the same shape they made circling around his neck when he would
stride her out to safety she leans she bows forward into the tender tang of the woods her
cheek on the soft nest of her offering and folds over on her stomach the way she’d slept
as a small girl and wept she wept sweetly
Carrie Nassif (she/her) is a queer poet, photographer, and psychologist of the rural Midwest. Her chapbook, lithopaedion, was a finalist in the 2020 Yes Yes Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming (in January) with Finishing Line Press.
Narmadhaa Sivaraja is a nature and haiku fanatic who draws inspiration from photographs. See more of her work on The Chaos Within.