WOODS SCENE

Once great hunters roamed our land. They used their guile and knowledge to harvest small and large game, using only basic weapons. And they had to watch for dangerous beasts. That was then.

Woods Scene

 

And she pitched haltingly,

stumbling amid the undergrowth,

her tears drying quickly in the chilly fall wind.

In an asymmetrical trail of doddering footprints,

her urine and blood foretold her demise.

The doe buckled now, spine snapped, bewildered,

failing at motherhood, gasping for breath, losing life.

Ears pert, her spotted fawn watched,

fearfully, knowingly, and stayed back.

Beyond the dense thicket, rethinking his ammo,

cursing his rifle, examining again its scope,

an unknowing novice damned his best luck yet.

 

Reviews

[just rose.]

Hunter and prey is one of the deepest paradoxes of man, quite literally. And yet this is a figurative rendering that goes so much further than that. Innocence, exposure, victimization, wisdom, transience, frailty ... it's all here. I went to a lecture once about carnival in Shakespeare and Breughel's painting The Hunters in the Snow. William Carlos Williams did a poem on that too. This reminds me of that. These hunters don't come home with anything. http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/hunters.html And the question becomes whether they should.

[Cherrie Palmer]

A Happy Meal generaltion, we are blessed to find dinner via GPS rather than a days walk and careful hunt. Wonderful piece.

[mope]

You've given us yet another well crafted, well considered poem with a sound message. Thanks.