February 12: A Make-up Post, Dash Off, Quincy Troupe, "Impression 12"

I owe you all a post.

I don't have much time.  In a few minutes, I must leave my office at the university to pick up my daughter from ballet practice.  Night has fallen.  It's almost 7 p.m.  The snow is still blowing, and the temperatures are still dropping.  In this big cavern of a building on the university campus, I am the lone professor in the English Department.  All the others have gone home to grade papers or ignore papers.

Tonight, I have a beautiful little poem for you guys and gals from the first Poet Laureate of the State of California.

Saint Marty needs to dash off now.

Impression 12

by:  Quincy Troupe

buck dance antlers frozen
in the still air
like fingers gripping death
by the side of the crooked road
a young deer dropped down
in its tracks
assumes a praying position
a bullet hole in the middle
of its shocked
forehead