Antlers

I won’t cry when I wrap his horns
in brown paper bags and bury him below

with his mother and her gypsies, painted
by the blood of the Year of the Boar,

the year the juniper flashed her wings and
I found him hung from some swallow branch

above the barn, dangling from some shallow
snake who cursed the sky by the blood of the doe,

with her antlers all torn and broken and thrown
into a garbage can over-flowing with rotten fruit.

When I found the horns, I brought them to my hips
and sowed the seeds they never meant to repeal.

When I walked through the garden of lions
I swore to the Lord by the blood of his son.

I bled like a crying maple tree. 

I drank the sap, called it honey.