May 14, 2008

Baker’s Deer

This, from the second section of David Baker’s poem “Late Pastoral,” in Midwest Eclogue:
2.
And of that sound,
what can I tell you? -
lingering deep
as a bear’s, drawn up from the gut, chest
.

broadened until her breath blows out
with great force, plosive
at the nose.
The sound’s like the swumpp of snow sliding
.

off the eaves, inevitable action-at-
a-distance
of gravity
from spring’s slow [...]