Deep in the forest, where no one has gone,
where rain bloats the black moss and mud,
a deer is rubbing its forelock and antlers
against a tree. The velvet that covers the antlers
unwinds into strips, like bandages.
The rain scratches at the deer’s coat
as if trying to get inside, washes the antlers
of blood, like a curator cleaning the bones
of a saint in the crypt beneath a church
at the end of a century, when the people
have begun to think of the bodies
as truly dead and unraiseable,
when children have begun to carry knives
in their pockets. Once the last shred
of velvet falls to the ground, the deer
bends to eat it, nearly finished with ritual
and altar, the tree’s side stripped of bark
while someplace in the world
a bomb strips away someone’s skin.
The deer’s mouth is stained with berries
of its own blood. Then, the deer is gone
and the tree left opened, the rain darkening
red against the hole in the sapwood.
The storm grows louder and louder
like a fear. The deer will shed
its velvet four more times before dying
of disease; the tree will grow its bark
again. Each atom in each cell will remember
the body it had made in this place, this time,
long after the rain flushes the river
to flood, long after this morning
when the country wakes to another war,
when two people wake in a house
and do not touch each other.