.

That first last time
I staggered through the woods of Maine,
Driving the deer westward,
the branches clawed at my face,
while the grass snaked around my feet.
Looking up, I saw him in the clearing,
his eyes piercing mine, but not begging.
The trigger, the bang, the smoke, --
then the gun got heavier in my arms.


His body is a trembling brown puddle
on the green canvas of the meadow,
and I feel his warmth
even from a foot away.
The wound in his neck rushes red
into the ground,
and his breath becomes asthmatic.
His eyes are two wet mirrors,
and I turn away.


But it was the sound, that shrill sound,
so frightful in its depth,
and echoed again and again
by the naked trees…
“Like a baby crying,”
a friend said ten years later.
That bitter morning,
in the woods,
I felt this, though I didn’t know it.


Yearning to finish him out of mercy,
I choked on my rage instead,
and the gun dropped like a stone to my feet.
I set the woods on fire,
and staggered away, --
a wounded beast.


But neither flames nor
rivers of vodka could drown out the sound
of that baby
crying.