"The Deer Come Down From the Mountains" and "Small Stack of Books"
New Poetry from The Metropolitan Review
We’re pleased to feature two poems from Blake Nelson, a returning voice to The Metropolitan Review. These poems poignantly explore nature, loss, and the way words can matter to us.
—The Editors
The Deer Come Down from the Mountains
When storms approach, the deer
come down
from the mountains. They stand in
people’s yards, they walk
through the Chevron station.
The deer look childlike and
amateurish, ears twitching
in the public park.
Gangs of them, five or six or seven,
they sniff the air, how do
they know the blizzard is coming?
Who among them
lives long enough to know the path
to safety?
The locals barely notice, avoid hitting
them with their cars.
But I notice, I regard
their intelligence, their forecasting
skills, their trust in the
humans who let them mingle
in their driveways, on main street.
It must be a nuisance, the deer shit,
when they get caught in your fence.
But the inhabitants of this
mountain town understand.
They accommodate the sheltering
animals, as prescribed by the natural
law of these lands.Small Stack of Books The night my father died I sat in my office And looked at the stack Of books I had authored, which I had poured My life’s spirit into, but which Would mean little to me during My last hours Just a stack of objects, one on top Of another, easily removed Biodegradable Family was the one thing you could Leave behind, which would grow And prosper without you, Not the thoughts You had once, the stories you Told, your particular point of view Still, once my father Was buried, I did not seek out a wife and Produce the children who would save Me from oblivion, I kept Scribbling and typing and building small Worlds in my mind Which brought me Momentary peace, it was all I was capable of, by habit, by inclination Now I suspect that either way, the result is The same, you come into the world And then pass out again, does the world need More books or does it need more children? The turning earth remains neutral On the question Blake Nelson previously published a book review in The Metropolitan Review of Nate Lippens’ My Dead Book.
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"...The turning earth remains neutral..." Both poems are beautiful and true.