by Doug Rawlings
NOTE: AFTER LIVING IN RURAL MAINE FOR ABOUT 25 YEARS, I NOTICED A WIERD CONFLUENCE: VETERANS DAY, HALLOWEEN, AND DEER HUNTING SEASON ALL MEET AROUND THIS TIME
Why this particular memory
that always comes for me
from a world
a half a world away
With its distinctive rhythms
its telling rhymes
so different from the silences
of the incandescent tamaracks
of the oaks and maples blackened
in this soft November rain
If not to join me
in a ghoulish adagio
with gutted deer swinging in dooryards
with pumpkin skulls glistening in village streets
If not to remind me
we are never that far away from
a time
a place
where no one
is entirely sane
