Dear One
or Deor, dear heart
As the narrow day was gloaming
You know the deer were surely roaming
Down the tracks ‘til they trespass
Upon this luscious lower grass
There among the fir and pine
You could see their sign
And hear the way the heather moves
Beneath the touch of tender hooves
A flick a bob the slightest stone
Tells you that you’re not alone
Yet it’s as if they’ve passed you by
No matter how you strain your eye
Tired and weeping over-strained
You feel your being has been drained
For both your eyes are moist as deer
Whose fearful presence seems so near
So near those eyes confuse your sight
Whose tears involve the failing light
To form a creature out of space
From your vision of that place
Thus this shape begins to haunt
These shadows where you hunt
Here nothing seems to be quite right
No matter how you strain your sight
For in a world of make believe
Your dear heart can but conceive
Its being beaten into view
As if in blood it had come true
So it seems your world is hell
Here in the narrow pass and spell
Where sharp goblins hide among the trees
Whose sudden sight your blood must freeze
|
But if you miss the annual cull
Your antlers fixed upon your skull
Their branch and fork and subtle tine
Prove that you are pure cervine
Each year afresh your rack is grown
And yet again its salve is thrown
To those who know its strength to cure
All those failings men endure
So drink their velvet when its shed
And plant those antlers in your head
Where thereof they’re wholly wed
For in one being we are bled
By that blessing quick and fast
As one another firmly cast
How could you tell your blood from mine
Too fleetly running to themselves divine
For in one life it’s all the same
We find ourselves to be the game
In which the others cut their stakes
While all we know is what it takes
To be a creature wild and free
The dearest thing that you can be
For your heart is turned to one
If this freedom can be won
For freedom in each other’s eyes
Seems a blessing in disguise
But it’s hard to be alone
Far beyond what has been known
Where you find that you are mine
Here within the fir and pine
By Thomas Albert Fox
©justWords Limited
|