December 19: Driving Home, Totaled Car, "As the Deer"

The other day, as I was driving home from work, two deer galloped across the street in front of me.  All of the traffic came to a standstill.  I have had a few vehicular encounters with whitetails.  Once of them resulted in a totaled car.  So, I knew to wait and watch.  Everyone else did, too.

It's a common story in the the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Any Yooper can relate to it. 

I had this poem published in the anthology The Way North a few years ago.

As the Deer

by:  Martin Achatz

As the deer lopes through dark woods

So my soul chases the Lord, over

Birch, fallen and mossy, victim

Of June storms, wind, rain

Shaking its white trunk and limbs

Like God’s voice on the mountain

With Charlton Heston, deep as flood

Water.  Before dawn, the deer leaps

In fog, sure hoofs lifting, reaching

For the true path from tree to tree

To pool to boulder to gully,

Panting, thirsty for running water,

Life-changing water that saves,

Washes leather tongue with the taste

Of God, the wild and sweet raspberry of it.

The black river rises from forest,

Divides pine and maple in two,

As the heavens from earth, night from day,

Seas from land, beast from human

At the beginning of creation.

The deer bounds into the black river,

Into twin beams, the eyes of Yahweh.

Praise God for car insurance.

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