About a doe that loses her footing.
First written in 1993, I wanted to write a parallel to D. G. Jones’ “Northern Water Thrush”. However, lately I have been feeling that it needs more action than imagery, so, I’ve revamped it with some immediacy. I hope the change is a little more appropriate to the material.
A doe runs through the fog,
panting,
darting
through a grey forest,
a great bear crashing fast behind her, chasing.
She dashes around
young firs,
large pine trunks,
and birch.
Her heart a-pacing, she urges
herself to run
faster,
the need to escape
searing her lungs with panic.
She jumps
and turns
too quickly,
and her ankle
twists around
a hemlock root.
The bear,
grumbling,
pine-shaking,
barrels
out of the mist
and into view,
grinning at her
and lunging
with sharp teeth
and rasping breath
and spittle
hanging from his chin.
In her fright, she
stumbles
to
staggering
hoof.
But, she doesn’t see the cliff
that looms near, and so,
she slips
and tumbles,
and the sense
of open
air
and
rush
-ing
wind
whips
her ears
until it
jabs
and stabs
her brain
like sharp branches
and the smell of blood on wet shore-rocks.
But, she comes aware on the shale of a riven shore as if from a long and tiring dream—still dazed and weak. What just happened?
She sees waves
but her head
is so foggy
she doesn’t
hear them
rushing on
the dull stones.
She rises,
pushing herself up
with all her will until she
wrenches free of her dispirited shell.
What just happened?
She falters,
seeing the shattered beach,
but everything is gone:
her smell, her touch, her taste.
What?
Stricken with this
. . . senseless affliction,
she leaves the foaming mouth of ocean behind,
and wonders
. . .
searching her memory,
wandering,
step
by solitary
step,
through the graveyard hush of gray mist,
its moon-silver soundlessness
un-answering.
Her troubled eyes seek
the torn walls
of this world-
removed,
desolate,
mangled,
rock -tilted
cliff -faced
shoreline, but there’s
nothing to be seen that brings back
the moments before, the minutes, or the hours;
nothing but rotted driftwood,
angular and beaten at surge-tide-level
where blackened seaweed is strewn like detritus from some past disaster,
and where bristlecone pines, cat spruce and hemlocks,
hunkered
and twisted
and worn from storm-gales
fall
from
high
like ancient hieroglyphs . . .
into extinction.
What?
She glimpses a crag above,
and suddenly,
from some distant well of memory,
she recalls a root,
a racing heartbeat,
a grinning bear,
and, . . . .
Her gaze traces the long descent to the fractured
boundary where water chews land.
Into the coastal ridge she stares,
her spirit’s eyes
meeting the empty
sockets that were hers.
Again she remembers,
ensnared in this cycle
of falling through mist,
rising in a daze
and stepping into a haze to
see the bones of her youth,
and recall her mistake
time
and again.
Again she remembers
that she didn’t see:
that in her headlong lust
for life she’d wasted her energy
in evasion of the grizzly called duty,
and so, she forgot where she was . . .
falling out of existence with
nothing worth telling
except a fearful chase
that begins with:
a doe runs through the fog . . .
Now this is writing at it’s finest. And from a Canadian, eh? Yeah, I’ve always said that Canadians have more talent than Americans, …and I’m from America. Anyway, this is expert craftsmanship. I’ll be keeping my eye on you. Maybe you’ll be famous someday, and will send me a signed book? 
Thanks for sharing, and keep writing stuff like this.
Hey Adam, thanks for this, this is really good free verse. Glad to meet someone else who knows the difference. 
Take care.
You are a master of your craft. I love the flow and the verses. Thank you for sharing this. I might imitate the style if you don’t mind
Welcome to Authspot, the spot for creative writing.
Read some stories and poems, and be sure to subscribe to our feed!
