Buckskin Elegy

image borrowed from bing

Buckskin Elegy

“At the Lychgate we may all pass as our own conduct

and our own judgement comes under a searching

review.”---Winston Churchill

The old man stood as still

as the deep shadows he hid within,

observing an ugly slash

of clear cut, big-butted stumps

and broken logs poking up

dead white like the forest’s bones,

watching with bright hazel eyes,

once those of a peregrine, squinting

now grimly behind ground glass,

staring at a densely wooden glen

teeming with game, creeks splashing

with fat sunset-bellied trout, air smoldering

with butterflies, sparrows, and the yellow jackets

of honey bees buzzing over thick bunches

of wild buttercups that no longer existed,

and had not for countless empty years;

patiently waiting for a scrub brush dog-sized

black-tailed buck he had been tracking,

pretty sure it would cross that scourged spot

on that dying hillside dotted in clumps

of tenth growth tiny sickly trees, scavenger oak

and twisted humpback thorny seedlings.

He could hear the echo of chainsaws

in the distance, disturbing the silence

as he saw only the tan ever-winding

logging roads on the sloping crew-cut shoulders

of nearby foothills;

there was no pristine hush beneath towering

brown-barked giants, no wild melodies

serenading him from the dark womb

of a thick forest--no forest;

he was startled by sudden movement

bursting into that bald scarred meadow

beneath him as a small three-point buck

stopped to survey the area, its nose,

ears and tail twitching, its back toward him.

The WWI 30-06 came up slowly to the man’s

patient shoulder, peering into the peep sight

with his good eye--the big gun cracked once

like a broken tree and the buck pitched

forward, the head shot splitting open

half its skull, shattering one of its antlers,

dropping down on its front legs,

refusing to die easily,

and the old man heard its death cry,

a short high bleat that froze his blood,

for the sound hung in the air

and the animal had called his name

clearly.

The hunter turned away, moving

like he was in a bad dream,

leaving the bleeding buck

for the several carrion birds

that perched in the thorn bushes

gulping the new blood smell,

who took to wing immediately,

their red eyes on the meal,

their putrid breath puffing,

their talons stretching before them,

paying no heed to the deerslayer

struggling off in the gathering gloom. 

Glenn Buttkus

February 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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