Poetry of Issue #8        Page 51

Alignment

Hoofs punctuating
the tawny fur of four
legs like quotation
marks of a final line,

splayed upward
in angles of non-sense
above the foam and swirl
the rocks whip up

under which the deer’s carcass
continues in a still twist,
head invisible in the unknown
underwater cold in its

appropriate time at the dead
end of the season while the new
struggles in the thin atmosphere
above, where limbs align to

the grounding below and the face
toward the reassurance of sky,
an upper-world stance, safe until a slip
brings a flip, a tumble from head to toe.

  John Zedolik