Imprint
I didn’t want to touch the fawn I found
nestled next to her dead mother
on the dirtroad shoulder, went
for my cell phone instead to call
the local shelter. I knew enough
of human touch contaminating
nature, how just my voice could generate
enough stress to kill. While waiting
for the rescue truck to come I kept
my distance, recalling stories I’d heard
about encounters with the wild
that made people feel small and insignificant,
but I didn’t feel small, I felt enormous,
as if my fingers were the prongs of pitchforks,
my breath the tremor of jackhammers.
After the workers came and carried her
away, I wandered back to the yellow car
I’ve loved one-sidedly for years, and together
we tumbled home like a great wrecking ball
careening towards another unsuspecting destination.
Weekly prompt for We Write Poems
mareymercy. 
This made me think of Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark”..
It’s got the same sort of quality.
I didn’t feel small, I felt enormous,
I could emphathise that this felt a small but huge deed. I also like that journeying ethos.
Hi, glad you found We Write Poems and decided to share your stuff.
Thanks, Irene!
I like the narrative element which carries with it the motion of the piece, so that even the narrative about the fawn moves, just at a different pace from the car. I look forward to reading more of your work.
margo
Thank you!
Like the narration. It creates beautiful images in my mind.
unbrushed
Thanks!
The title is sheer perfection!
Thanks Mel! It used to have a quote that started it but somehow it got dropped off. It was from some magazine to which i was submitting some poems, and on their ‘how to submit’ page, the editors said: “Please, no more dead deer by the side of the road poems.” So of course I had to write one!
That serendipity motivation produced a little marvel of a poem. I love the way you told it straight, introduced your emotions but definitely avoided the sentimentality implied in the magazine’s crass embargo.
Thanks, Viv!
Beautifully done! Favorite part: that inversion of how the human/nature interaction is usually portrayed, with those pitchfork fingers. And also, that ending is a knockout. Will have to stop by here to peruse some poems more often. 🙂
Nicely imagined poem, and not just another copy of Stafford’s either. Although we might share some distant kinship as I just love it too when someone says, “oh no, don’t do that!”, and sets my compass bearing straight on to that!
While you play with scale, rather in a common way becoming larger at the end, yet where I was the most impacted was at first glance when thinking ‘even a word could kill’. Now that’s powerful (and more). Look forward to reading more of your poems.