Poem: Patty Heart on Cadillac Mt. With new illo

Deer at the Side of the Road
by me, digital composite
click image to view larger

Patty Hearst Dreams of Persephone Lost On Cadillac Mountain

A highway runs through your dream.  Big semis, Harleys
rumble.  Hell's Angel Harleys, and a little platoon
of matching yellow cars.  They flit through the semis,
a flock of goldfinches, a school of fish. 

You spot a deer standing at the edge
of the road and know it is about to die.  It will be thrown
over the hood of a red car that will careen into the side
of an SUV and they will roll into the ditch at your feet.
Crumpled.  You want to wave your arms to head off the deer,
but your arms are timbers from the mast of a ship.
The ship founders on rocks.  Fog. You know now
you're dreaming because you wouldn't mix metaphors
awake.  You're trapped in the dream, surrounded by Harleys
revving their engines, skulls grinning. 

Soon, you will wake to bodyguards peeling redfruit
on the rocky coast or fall and fall through green water, tangled
in the limbs of drowned deer.  Or throw a leg
over that Harley slowing to offer you a ride.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
From a MNP prompt by Pat Lawler, published by Turtle Ink Press, 2007
with new illo