'On Finding a Dead Deer in My Backyard', and Other Poems, by Nolo Segundo

I saw them a few weeks ago. My wife called me, something urgent—
so I left the computer and went to see what so excited her.

Three deer, 3 young deer meandering around our ¼ acre backyard.
They look thin, she said— I agreed (not saying it was not a good sign with winter coming near).

We enjoyed watching them through our plate glass door, their
casual grace, that elegance of walk deer have when unafraid.
They were special, even more than the occasional cardinal
alighting in our yard like a breathing ruby with wings—so
we stayed as still as possible. I told her that deer can only see
what moves, so we held ourselves tight like insensate statues.

Two of these white-tailed beauties grazed daintily on the ground
but the third was drawn to our giant holly tree, resplendent
with its myriad red berries, like necklaces thrown capricious.
I was concerned— something alarming about even deer drawn
like the proverbial moth—safe, I wondered, for deer or tree?

The triplets soon left our yard, as casually as they had come,
and a week went by—then one day a single deer came back.
I say back because she went straight for the holly tree, and
I banged on the plate glass door and yelled as fierce as an
old man can yell to scare off the now unwanted intruder, for
something told me the holly tree would be death to the deer.

She fled, but the next day came back again, again alone, and
again with eyes only for that tree, an Eve that could not say
no to the forbidden fruit— or berries or leaves it appears.
Again I chased her away, and for a few days saw no return.

Then one brisk morning our neighbor called—he saw what
we could not see in the deep green thickness of that holly tree.
The doe lay sleeping under its canopy (so death always seems
with animals, unlike a human corpse where something is gone),
killed it seemed by berries or the leaves of the innocent tree.

I called my township—they said, put the carcass by the street,
we’ll send someone to pick it up— but I couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
Not just because I walk with a cane, and am old and unsure
how such a moving would be done— no, no, it was more—
when I saw the deer lying sheltered beneath the tree it loved,
the tree it died for, it seemed a sacred place, consecrated—
and I could not bring myself to violate nature’s holy ground.

Fortunately I have a neighbor who is not sentimental, and he
dragged the dead doe roughly to the curb, and I knew, by
its pungent unearthly smell of death, it was the only answer.

The Old Tracks

In my town and only
90 feet from my house
Run a pair of old tracks,
Railroad tracks older
Than my house, even
Older than me, and I
Am become old, very,
Very old, like a tree
Whose branches
Betray it with
Every strong wind
And fall to ground
Leaving less and
Less of the tree.

I used to walk in
Between those
Carefully laid
Iron rails, stepping
On the worn wood
Of the old ties as
Though they were
Made of glass….
I walked the length
Of my small town,
I walked the world.
I walked where
Passenger trains
Carried lives and
Their once warm,
Now cold, dreams
And I was part of
Each life, now gone
To ether and mist,
And so too my
Lonely soul will
Ride those rails
One bright day.

Still, a freight train
Comes by once or
Even twice a week,
And I thrill to hear
Its wailing horn as
it cries out for a
forgotten glory,
and the ground
still shakes a bit
as the old train
lumbers slowly
by my house and
I wait a holy wait
For the music of
Its rumbling and
The cry of its old
Heart as a young
Engineer pulls the
Whistle and sees
Not that he is
Driving eternity.

An Old Poet’s Walk Through An Old Graveyard

He always liked to walk among the dead——
for him this was a secret pleasure to imagine
the lives of once breathing, thinking beings.
He would stop at each tombstone, curious
perhaps more than reverent, for he had long
known the body was just a set of clothes
the soul wears in a world where appearances
matter more it seems than what lay inside…

The old man liked to compare his years to
those chalked on each stone, continually
amazed that so many had died with fewer
years on their belts, so to speak—not
that he thought his 74 winters was a lot:
yet seen backwards in time, all the summers
and all the snows and all the fallings of dried
out leaves dying dressed in color like kings,
all those memories wouldn’t fill a large
basket in that living library called memory.

There was a newish looking gravestone with
one of those weather resistant photos of a
handsome young man who died in his 24th
year—the old man always wondered how
the young die— by a rare illness, or suicide,
or was he doing something he should not
have been doing, and karma took notice?

In the years practicing his little lauded hobby
the old poet found old graveyards to be best,
for old graveyards have markers of lives that
turned to dust a long, long time ago: 100, 200
years for some— but for the old poet it was as
though they had died yesterday, because they
were new to him, and his mind’s eye could see
them all living life large again in their own slice
of time, in their own worlds, with beauty and
pain, with loss and joy, with grace and fear….

There were so many folks to visit: each one
whose little stone house he stopped by he
introduced himself to, said hello, wished
them well, and wondered about what sort
of life the woman who died at 36 had lead,
or the really old man of 98 with the funny,
old fashioned name—did he regret missing
the century mark, the old poet wondered.

Some graves he did not like to see, for
they were the graves of babes, who
left the world less than a year after
they had entered it with such promise—
some died within weeks or months,
a few died the day they were born—
all spoke in stone of hearts broken,
of hope stolen, of love taken away….

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.j. Carber 76, has in his 8th decade had poems and essays published in over 150 literary journals/anthologies in 12 countries and a trade publisher, Cyberwit.net, has released 3 poetry books: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Sings [2022].  A retired English/ESL teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia], he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.