A Poem For Sunday

“The Stags” by Kathleen Jamie:

This is the multitude, the beasts

you wanted to show me, drawing me

upstream, all morning up through wind-

scoured heather to the hillcrest.

Below us, in the next glen, is the grave

calm brotherhood, descended

out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling

like the signatories of a covenant;

their weighty, antique-polished antlers

rising above the vegetation

like masts in a harbor, or city spires.

We lie close together, and though the wind

whips away our man-and-woman smell,

every stag-face seems to look toward us, toward,

but not to us: we’re held, and hold them,

in civil regard. I suspect you’d

hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight

our shared country, lead me deeper

into what you know, but loath

to cause fear you’re already moving

quietly away, sure I’ll go with you,

as I would now, anywhere.

(From The Overhaul © 2012 by Kathleen Jamie. Used by permission of Graywolf Press. Photo by Richard Fisher)