March 2018
Mary Makofske
makofske@warwick.net
makofske@warwick.net
I live in New York State with my husband, in a solar house with an extensive garden that provides a bounty of food. I am active in Sustainable Warwick, a local environmental organization. The beauty of the Hudson Valley, political/social issues, and my family are the focus of many of my poems. My lastest book is World Enough, and Time (Kelsay, 2018), and my work has appeared recently in American Journal of Poetry and New Millennium. www.marymakofske.com
Bambi
No deer at all, the stuffed animal
I opened the door to when I heard a knock.
Unsteady on long legs, its huge ears
cocked as if waiting to hear its name.
“Bambi!” my mother said behind me, and why
not? I wrapped my arms around its neck
and leaned my cheek against its fuzzy jaw.
Hadn’t I cried at his mother’s death,
at his father’s stern injunction to care for himself?
Hadn’t I even, at a truck stop parking lot, cursed
hunters with a deer strapped to their car?
Lucky they saw the humor, my father said,
though I could tell he was proud.
And when my neighbor, a boy I didn’t trust
because he pulled the wings from locusts, twirled
Bambi by one ear till it broke clean off,
didn’t I grab a ruler and thwack him so hard
his arm carried home a stripe red as a burn?
A donkey, my mother later confessed,
but close enough for a girl who needed
a fawn. The real ones I now don’t need
are born just past our fence, learn
to keep their distance, but before they learn,
wobble on stilt legs and stare at me in trust.
I hate them, I say, those rats with hooves,
thieves that stripped our garden, tulips, and shrubs
before we made a truce with posts and wire.
Though every so often our gazes lock,
their eyes limpid and bright as the black beads
I gazed at with love when the wild
seemed passive as a doll I could coax
to sleep in the crook of my arm.
The Doll Collection (Terrapin, 2016) ed. by Diane Lockward
Bambi
No deer at all, the stuffed animal
I opened the door to when I heard a knock.
Unsteady on long legs, its huge ears
cocked as if waiting to hear its name.
“Bambi!” my mother said behind me, and why
not? I wrapped my arms around its neck
and leaned my cheek against its fuzzy jaw.
Hadn’t I cried at his mother’s death,
at his father’s stern injunction to care for himself?
Hadn’t I even, at a truck stop parking lot, cursed
hunters with a deer strapped to their car?
Lucky they saw the humor, my father said,
though I could tell he was proud.
And when my neighbor, a boy I didn’t trust
because he pulled the wings from locusts, twirled
Bambi by one ear till it broke clean off,
didn’t I grab a ruler and thwack him so hard
his arm carried home a stripe red as a burn?
A donkey, my mother later confessed,
but close enough for a girl who needed
a fawn. The real ones I now don’t need
are born just past our fence, learn
to keep their distance, but before they learn,
wobble on stilt legs and stare at me in trust.
I hate them, I say, those rats with hooves,
thieves that stripped our garden, tulips, and shrubs
before we made a truce with posts and wire.
Though every so often our gazes lock,
their eyes limpid and bright as the black beads
I gazed at with love when the wild
seemed passive as a doll I could coax
to sleep in the crook of my arm.
The Doll Collection (Terrapin, 2016) ed. by Diane Lockward
Credit
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©2018 ADD NAME
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