Читать книгу Bone Map - Sara Eliza Johnson - Страница 9

Deer Rub

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.