Today's poem is by Pascale Petit

Roe Stag
        (Poem beginning with a line by Lucie Brock-Broido)

Tell me there is a meadow, afterwards,
that the roe stag will come
to the top of my garden,

that the window will cut me
with glass blades
of dewy hooves.

That I'll lay out my doe mask,
my necklace of icicles,
onto the deep windowsill.

Tell me the stag will be there
among nettles and briar, his mouth
panting, his lungs clear.

That his legs won't tangle
in the electric wire
around my tower.

That if he can't find his way
back into the before,
his horns jewelled

with thorns and flowers
might grow into a tall grove.
Tell me that even in my solitude,

my altar goods laid out
to the god of woods,
that this red deer

against the steep viridian field
will sprout a ladder between his tines
that I can climb.

That his antlers will be strong
as my spine, that I will scale
the rungs of myself

out onto the clouded
chancel of the sky, my body
slick as a newborn fawn.

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Copyright © 2023 Pascale Petit All rights reserved
from The Manhattan Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission