Late November and I am
in a country house.
The moon glares across
an open field and I see
the entrails of a deer
like a shapeless sculpture;
night air is a scythe
cutting at stubble I can’t see.
I have been in the eaves
and found I could not stay.
The beams are simple timbers
made of simple trees,
beneath this shingle
I feel them in my skin.
A wind in the eaves,
the shingles are unloosed,
a deer rises from the pile of himself
I am a man inside a country house.
Flanks and splints of oak are all
that keep the night off my skin.
Outside the ground is turning
harder than a skull.
Some deer will walk into
the eye-holes of the night
and find the story of all men.
A son must face a treeless place
a country house held up by trunks
and branches old as man.
All shapes out there are still.
My father does not walk upon the earth.
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