Morning Prayers
Every day in autumn, my husband wakes before dawn
while I continue laying in our soft bed listening to him
getting dressed in the dark. His movements are
monastic––all adorned in prayer and devotion.
There is purpose to the way he pulls on his pants
and hunting jacket; quietly, so as to not disturb
his adoring wife (who has grown accustomed
to waiting for the sound of the alarm––laying
awake for some time, though rarely lets on).
I hear the front door open, then close,
and feel his sturdy body walking
up the steep hill behind our house;
his footsteps slowly settle me
back into the dreaming.
Each morning he sits under the same pine tree,
where he remains for at least a few hours––
well past sunrise and the frost’s first radiant glow.
He watches the deer as they greet the day;
combing the stilled landscape in their small
families, heads bent in gratitude over what little
green grass remains. He tracks their stealth frames,
learns their patterns, admires their power and grace.
His rifle is always at his side, and more often than not
these curious, four-legged kin come close enough
to stare (perhaps even as an offering to this honourable
hunter and the family he is beholden to). But more often still,
my husband is held in place by their proximity and
inexplicable beauty; and so, he does not take the shot.
A mama with her two fawns visits often;
the little ones mewing at him, surely by now
recognizing this equally mysterious man
sitting in the morning light. When he comes in––
often frozen to the bone as I am folded over
a hot breakfast––he laments at not being able
to lift his gun, at how much he hates the killing.
“The does remind me too much of you,” he says,
always with a soft flame in his eyes. He admits
that all he is capable of out there is prayer.
And then the morning comes when I hear the shot.
It is so loud, it billows throughout my whole body.
I instantly know that some gorgeous deer has died
as I open my eyes to the blazing orange sun
lifting his sleepy head above the horizon. So I too
begin to pray. Then my good man comes in to get me.
“Quick. Get dressed. I need your help.”
His posture is reverent, humble, grief-stricken.
So I dress and follow him up the mountain,
bringing local maize and sage to offer this one
who has offered her life to us, and the tiny,
growing babe that I now carry in my womb.
She is so newly dead, she appears nearly alive––
laying on her side, still steaming with warmth.
Her eyes are open and pink tongue hangs
from her mouth, tasting the early rays
that sweep out across the morning.
We kneel and speak aloud our gratitude,
admiration, blessings, and heartbreak;
laying beauty on the ground beside her.
Then together, we slowly carry this great one
down the mountain. I hum as we walk, holding
her elegant hooves in our trembling hands.
This doe, who in my husband’s eyes,
looks so much like me, surely is a part of our
family; surely will nourish our bodies
and go on breathing with our storied beings.
We vow to live well into her good name.
Something Ancient
The first autumn of our daughter’s life,
my husband shot a deer and an elk,
we were bewildered by our good fortune.
We spent days butchering in the kitchen
while our sixth month old baby played at our feet,
while friends and neighbours came over to hold her,
play with her, to help wrap the meat, cut the bones,
cradle the heart and liver, sing, tell stories and
shed tears over the two blessed animals/ancestors
that would grant us life for the following year.
I watched the ordinariness of such a thing
as it landed in my daughter’s being, how obvious
it was to her that we would participate in the making
of life and death, the offerings, the stripping of hide
from sinew encased flesh, the pungent aroma and
deep red blood on the counter, on her parent’s hands
and clothes, the piles of bones, the endless hours of work
and exhaustion, the way grief and gratitude were cousins
chasing one another around the kitchen and falling down
in fits of breathlessness, of wonder, of the truest kind
of ceremony she had ever seen. If we want to eat meat,
this is how it is done, said her tiny, primal body.
If we want to know our humanity, this is also how
it is done. We will not outsource the killing,
we will not pretend death does not exist
when it is the reason we exist.
I saw all of this in the easy way she moved through
those laborious days and I learned something
ancient about my capacity as her Mother.
So, in the second autumn of our daughter’s life,
I carried her on my back up and down hills
to the place where my husband knelt
beside the doe he had recently shot––
our friends were standing around the deer’s
fallen body too, making offerings and heaving
their sorrow, their praise into the frosty air.
Our daughter watched as her daddy slid his knife
along the length of the doe’s soft, brown belly,
as he found a puddle of milk waiting inside,
as dusk settled deeper into that late-November sky,
as he steadied his hands and worked with tears
streaming down his cheeks, as the world stopped
for a time so we could remember our place within it.
And much later on, after we ground the meat,
after we scrubbed the counters and carried the hooves
back out onto the land, after we prayed over those hooves,
after we watched grief and gratitude, those wild cousins,
make a wreckage of our days, we grilled steaks
and sat together at the table, our daughter
eagerly reaching for the plate, her hands so open,
so new, reaching over and over again from the plate
to her mouth, like a ritual, like she understood
what all the sorrow and effort was for.
Like she had seen the body of this animal,
the bones and the blood, like she would not
stop eating until she felt our ancestor
stand up and leap inside of her.
The Ones Who Make and Unmake a Life
There was once a hunter who fell in love with a deer woman. He followed her tracks for many years, eventually courting her into his heart and home. Her wildness both scared and strengthened him. The deer woman adored the hunter, though their love did not come easy. They had to learn the wooded and sophisticated ways of one another, they had to trace their fingers along the sorrows each of them carried for the worlds they had given up in order to be together.
They were married in the high mountains over several crisp and mysterious days, when the surrounding aspens flushed orange and gold. No one had seen such a ceremony before, or if they had, it wasn’t for a very long time. The hunter and deer woman’s shared life was spoken into being by all of their people, for better or for worse. They emerged tender-hearted and even more whole than they had been before, ready to turn outward, ready to let the world stand in the center of their love.
One day the deer woman became pregnant. She continued to walk the woods with her swift gait as her belly swelled and their stories deepened. She laid on the Earth every morning as a ritual, as the most trustworthy thing she knew how to do for growing the child inside of her. The hunter designed and built a hearth in their home with the help of a friend. It was what he knew how to do––to make a welcoming place for fire, for a beating heart inside of the life they were being dreamt into.
When the child finally arrived, she was born of their unconventional love, she was from them, but not of them. She was her own myth, conjured by the nobility of every other plant, rock, animal, and human who had walked, prowled, soared, and sang before them. She was a lion cub, furry and fierce. A warrior girl, beautiful and brave. They recognized her immediately.
The hunter, deer woman, and lion cub lived with their wolf pup, an unwieldy family who apprenticed themselves to a kind of story they had seldom seen in the civilized world with its speed and endless need for more. They practiced being slow and needing less, they used their hands, made beauty and songs, danced for every reason, opened their home often to feast and toast with friends and neighbours.
And so the story goes. There is no happily ever after because they are real and fallible, still learning and letting go. Because they are shaped by all the other beings that surround them, the ones who make and unmake a life––the snow and sage, the elk, hawk, fox, trees, hills, raspberries, all the Aunties and Uncles of that little lion cub, the Old Ones, the rivers and places across the ocean, the eloquence spoken between those places, the longing that lives in their bones, the guitar and the loom, the sunrise, sunset, Equinox, and Solstice.
And so, if I am to be faithful to their story, then I must tell you the stories of all these other ones too. It looks like we will be here for a long time. Where shall I begin?
Writing Again After More Than a Year of Not Writing
I walked to save my life, as I have so often written
to save my life. I walked because I did not know
what else to do. I walked in the same way
a carpenter picks up the hammer
when things have gone too quiet,
when, in another quiet, the fiddle player
lifts his instrument to his lifted chin.
And things have been too quiet,
for months and months
nothing but quiet.
I have trusted the great sweeping sea
of wordlessness that has overtaken my life.
I have been patient, I’ve given my hands
to a hundred other things. But now
there is nothing left to do or give,
patience has abandoned me and even
trust is turning away from the sea,
it is becoming something else––
hard, sceptical, begging for release.
So I walk. I walk toward the words
hoping I will see them one day
in the distance, hoping
they will come running at me
like a mountain lion on the scent
of some lovely prey.
I walk toward that scent
and I fall into its song.
I become the prey,
I say take me
please
eat me, use me,
let my life be of service,
let it be something great.
Acknowledgments
“Morning Prayers” was originally published in my third collection of poetry, Memory Keeper (Wayfarer Books 2022)
“Something Ancient” and “The Ones Who Make and Unmake a Life” were both originally published in my fourth collection of poetry, Matter/Mother (Wayfarer Books 2024)
All publishing rights have reverted back to me as an author. They have never been published online.
“Writing Again After More Than a Year of Not Writing” is an unpublished piece
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