Dec 2020
THREE BROTHERS WITHOUT A BUCK
it was still mostly dark, with a crimson stripe
of the horizon, as my brothers and i trudged
into the thickets, ice snow chunks, crunched
under our boots as we tried to be quiet with every step
we felt our prey was close, a prized buck, we've
been hunting him for years without luck, when we spied
him a few years back and we said with each year
passing maybe this one, man against nature, as we wondered
who would win, yet each year, we came up empty-handed
so this year, we felt like luck was on our side, no reason why
it just was, so as we walked into the woods pushing branches
from this side to that, we pushed on, it was a couple hours now
as the sun fully rose, we still hadn't spotted him, we were
about to give up when my brother up head went shoosh so
we froze, both from the cold and the moment at hand, stock still
when a branch moved, it wasn't a branch, it was him, the
prized buck slowly moving from side to side, it probably knew we were watching still it played along, none of us breathed except for the condensation coming from all our all noses, in and out- it became a stand still none of us moved, neither man nor animal- it was a moment or possibly more as we stood that way- when the three of us took a step forward, one of us, which one, stepped on a dead tree branch that went snap, as the three of us looked at each other in disbelief, not again, the buck leapt forward over a dead tree trunk and like that was gone, as we headed back to the car, no one placed blamed, we were quiet each thinking what story we would use to explain why- as we all wondered to ourselves, why we do this to ourselves year after year willing to leave our warm beds for the chance to stand in the freezing cold, we created our
story of an animal made out of folk-lore status that grew from year to year
by Michael Perry
it was still mostly dark, with a crimson stripe
of the horizon, as my brothers and i trudged
into the thickets, ice snow chunks, crunched
under our boots as we tried to be quiet with every step
we felt our prey was close, a prized buck, we've
been hunting him for years without luck, when we spied
him a few years back and we said with each year
passing maybe this one, man against nature, as we wondered
who would win, yet each year, we came up empty-handed
so this year, we felt like luck was on our side, no reason why
it just was, so as we walked into the woods pushing branches
from this side to that, we pushed on, it was a couple hours now
as the sun fully rose, we still hadn't spotted him, we were
about to give up when my brother up head went shoosh so
we froze, both from the cold and the moment at hand, stock still
when a branch moved, it wasn't a branch, it was him, the
prized buck slowly moving from side to side, it probably knew we were watching still it played along, none of us breathed except for the condensation coming from all our all noses, in and out- it became a stand still none of us moved, neither man nor animal- it was a moment or possibly more as we stood that way- when the three of us took a step forward, one of us, which one, stepped on a dead tree branch that went snap, as the three of us looked at each other in disbelief, not again, the buck leapt forward over a dead tree trunk and like that was gone, as we headed back to the car, no one placed blamed, we were quiet each thinking what story we would use to explain why- as we all wondered to ourselves, why we do this to ourselves year after year willing to leave our warm beds for the chance to stand in the freezing cold, we created our
story of an animal made out of folk-lore status that grew from year to year
by Michael Perry
