A Dead Deer Reminds Me of William Blake

A Dead Deer Reminds Me of William Blake

She hit it before she had time

to swerve or stomp on the brakes—

the deer wide-eyed in the windshield,

then stretched out on the roadside

as if placed there on purpose.

A tan and white mound of once-life

now dying, the round red intestines

exposed on the grass still

digesting the last meal of clover.

While the deer stubbornly died

she trembled at the curb

in helpless sorrow and cried,

and I couldn't help but think that her tears

were proof that sometimes we can

even comprehend Blake:

Every thing that lives is Holy.

But what about the dead? Blake again:

If thou art the food of worms,

how great thy blessing!

A day later the buzzards gathered,

nodding bald heads in agreement.

_______________________

Last October I wrote my first poem for dVerse, a marvelous online poetic community. It happened to be a Meeting the Bar prompt. So imagine my happiness to find that for tonight's Meeting the Bar Tony Maude has invited us to choose a prompt from the previous year to use as inspiration for a poem. I blended a few prompts together for this one--obviously, Victoria's Literary Allusion prompt. And Anna's prompt, The Unfathomable, which I didn't have opportunity to write for the first time around. One might also judge this poem as an example of Anna's High/Low Art prompt. At any rate, while it's been a fun year, I wish I could have been more consistent. A poet's family cannot live by words alone!