Grant Clauser
Deer Morning
It cleared the boxwood hedge and landed
feet from my hound dog frozen
at the sight of the rut-crazed buck—
six sharp points and broad-chested
like a king’s stag from the old country.
And there they stood, both unsure
what move to make next, and I
at the glass door, nervous and awed.
Sun clawing through the neighbor’s
pines until a November gust shook
the tall trees, breaking the collective
spell. It sprang past my wilted autumn
garden, away from yard and dog
and toward the two-lined road
where traffic stopped to watch
some rare magnificence
escape into broken cornfields
between houses rising from trenches
and the world waking again and again
into the shock of loss, how quickly
we come to forget it.
Back to Issue XIV…
Lynne Ellis writes in pen. Their words appear in Poetry Northwest, The Seventh Wave, the North American Review, the Missouri Review, Bracken, and many other beloved journals and anthologies. Winner of the Washburn Prize, the Perkoff Prize, and the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she believes every poem is a collaboration. Read their digital chapbook, "Future Sketchbook," online at Harbor Review. Ellis holds a Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington, serves as a poetry reader at Crab Creek Review, and is Publishing Editor of Tulipwood Books, a developmental-editing press. She wants to work with you.
