& Deer ([Ampersand, misunderstood])

-- it seems overwhelming to me,
MY HAVING NO
conceptualization of schema

 -- Ultimately we need to gather
our friends and settle in a glen
near our families
a shady grove
not sketchy but well-wooded
or were it sketched, well-wrought

well-wooded, populated by extremophiles who
hide, who inhabit inscrutable depths
of wood, stone and earth;

 -- with woodpeckers friendly a-thump, snakes not vicious
but yes, dangerous (we are men, after all);
wild, out-there, your kids need to know;
& deer, the great misunderstood deer, Kissinger's
useless eaters, but not useless, even if animals
could be. (Set aside
humanity, for now). Right here in the U.S.A,
God's own city,
these deer are our own natives,
Polacks of the Great American Ruminants,
drinking firewater of polluted landscapes,
but still alive. Eating tree & bush
& grass beneath the frost. [Bison with huge necks
massively heave snow aside. Who said snow
was just white and pretty; We reside.]

(Nothing more natural than electricity,
fatigue, the quest
to not be extinguished. In some ways,
we are that fragile.)

 -- The
snakes not man, you know, men unserpentine:
surreptitious but uncoiled. blasphemy without heat.
salamanders and saddled feet.
our children must know,
forest.

 -- &
tribesmen stone creeks in the evening, gathering
piles along the banks, relieving. reliving ghost
fires, the weird swift waters. something like time
gathering, fathering. uncomfortableness sure as
mother's milk, even now developing. our greatest
mistake: not knowing how this debacle nourishes
us, forces necessity upon us like a dagger and
a dangerous but absolute mission. Failure never
was an option. That's not just an idiom, but a 
truth. It's just something that happens.
We do not try
not to love, nor
would we claim to

(intentionally)

adorn hearths with rubbish or something
unwholesome   after all   love
 is more the trumpets
than the harp; more than trumpets
and less than harp-song. Lesser and more ordinary,
simpler, but less crafty. It is here &
there; it is right here. 

 -- (intentionally)

Right beneath your wings. Call it poetic
but true-- ... ... and now, becomes 
(is) the truth redacted. Nothing less perfect,
I say, then pigeons taking wing
and defecating without awareness.
These kind of accidents
are not accidents. Ashberry was right:
these accents seem their own defense.