Deer Mortality

 

Yesterday I went out to our family farm to dig up some perennials for my newer garden at Prairie Hill. And I found a dead deer in my old greenhouse. It had been there for quite some time, and it had been food for a variety of creatures. I imagine it starved. We had high drifts of snow covering everything for weeks, and it couldn't find enough food to survive. The greenhouse provided some shelter, and also some area not covered with snow, but nothing green.  I was sad to think of this deer and its relatives with so very little to sustain them. During all that snow-covered time, I had not been thinking of the deer and other creatures who need to browse, even in the winter.

Seeing the deer made me think of another experience I had with a deer several years ago, while I was still living at the farm. I was heading toward Friends Meeting one Sunday morning, and as I was coming down our hill in the car, I encountered another deer with another sad ending. Here's a poem I wrote about it.

Transference

Nan Fawcett

Out of the ditch

  a flash of brown.

Then the impact,

  flesh on metal.

The car shudders.

Quick as thought

  a doe flops convulsively

  on the road behind.

I brake to a stop

  kneel by the deer

  now still, life gone.

As I turn away 

  something happens: a convergence.

What is this strange alchemy

  that stitches wild deer spirit

  to my own? Can this happen?

  a spark rising from the dark still form

  to disappear within me?

I can imagine

  ancients knowing this mystery:

  sudden death can send 

  the life flame 

  skittering into another body. 

What I know is 

  for weeks afterward 

  I see the world

  with deer eyes.