Trifecta of Sonnets, New Year’s Day
Shelly Cato
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2024 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Margaret Reid, Traditional Verse
"We cannot know his legendary head..." —Rilke
i.
Heaven grays, the river storms. A buck,
sculling at the center crest of dusk—
his rack, a nest of silver twigs—
slashes river-green from river-black.
He carves upstream. His wake,
a froth of yellow lace. I feel his lease
on time, this unexpected push
toward culminating twilight. Riverbanks
receding from his reach, he reels
away toward Bullen Chase's pier.
His hooves thump rotten creosote
pine-planks. But why his sudden veer? It
was articulated by my human hands—
rushing to record his swim for Instagram.
ii.
He might have spent the gloaming
rutting glyphs into the elms,
then bedded down in deadfall.
Safe, this first day of the year.
Instead, he flails then rises
under eaves of shearing rock. In the
Yazoo Delta where I'm from, a slowing
half-ton Silverado would have spun
its darkened window down. From a man-
made gap, an echo back, a shot. And branch
by antlered branch, the deer—you know
as well as I—would drown. A bent
and extra tine, the last thing to descend. My
husband couldn't stand a mismatched crown.
iii.
Yes, his drop-tined crown would tip,
then tilt in turbulence, and list. But,
why this sudden scene? So I could
watch the bullet's copper weight
incise thick muscle to its core? I can't
see it in any other light. He shot because
he shot. That was his way. That bullet
could've killed our dog or me. The rain
still drips. A gray-black fox traipses
gravel to its kits. A purple heron statues
in the mist—and the deer. I wonder if
instead of his knees buckled into muck
and his rack shorn, might this deer leave
earth in a single apricot'd shaft—in light?
