PoetryBoard
Last review: January 16th 2004
Don Welch, The Keeper of Miniature Deer
W.N.J. Series #22, Juniper Press, La Crosse,
WI, 1986, 29 pp.
The Keeper of Miniature Deer
The keeper of miniature deer
was an old man with stiff knees.
He had the straight eyes of a child,
he walked the emperorís grounds
speaking to the white swans
and the empressís pheasants.
In the compound of red deer,
among the musk and estrus,
he was especially fond of two old ones
born joined at the shoulders,
a stag with its rack huge and carbuncular
spreading out over a doe,
the old doe with eyes like fitful oil
over water. And he who knew nothing
of life after death, who lived
only to serve the miniature deer,
let them eat from his hands,
holding out salt in one,
in the other, grain,
softly calling their names,
saying Mother and Father.
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