How to Make Sure the Things You Love Never Die
       

Towns like this, it's forest or yard, nothing between,
it's actual deer and decorative deer like flags declaring

allegiance to places like this, and, in the fall, owners
of the decorative kind black-bag their hollow heads

and staring eyes, and yes this makes them look
doomed but the actual agreed-upon meaning is

the opposite, as in Don't kill me, I'm a statue, I belong
to someone. For the same reason horse-folk tie

bells on their horses. That is, communication is
possible. Civilization flourishes. People like shooting things

but most of them will not shoot something if they know
someone else doesn't want it shot. Courtesy lives.

Twenty, home for one more holiday with the parents,
having already for years expected them to die any minute

and always trying to get a little mourning in ahead of time
just in case, watching the barely parented world slip by

from the backseat, I admired this kingdom of faith
and tenderness, this decking of the beasts in bag

and bell, these lawns and pastures filled with nothing
but blindness and ringing. And yet I also wanted nothing

more than none of it, than the churn of something better
far away, flocks of naked faces, the silence of fair game.

Tweet
Copyright © 2014 Christopher Todd Matthews All rights reserved
from West Branch
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission