Henry Wise

Firstborn Buck

White as your mother's dress         

once upon a time, an angel gleaming,

on that slat of barnwood against the wall,

untaming the room. A honed candelabra of frozen wax,   

bright pearls in a grain of darkness

measuring life (three or four winters), stronger

each year. I should know. Two sheds tallying two

seasons arranged on a table like broken

halos document our story,

forming a rib cage, or a bleak forest

by the little swamp on the farm

where on our twelfth anniversary

a doe watched me watching her

frozen against the trees. She disappeared

like a dream into the woods. Then I saw it,

the bone-crown, bright, stunning

against the coat, as red as a hilltop cedar,

and I paused, did not know how

to ruin such handsome beauty.

But sense returned as I stared

down the blued barrel of nothing     

to show for all the trying, all the toil.

I used to think it would just happen: that

nature would take the course I hoped

because I hoped. I'd stopped

believing. 

We came together, tearing

through           a violent dream                   

at dusk on my uncle's farm.

In your name

I knelt in the wilderness of death

against the warm, confederate hide

(somehow, the colors change)

of some doe's fawn, now a buck

swollen with rut. I knew life

is a mystery, and the real work is only

beginning, and the pain

I've given just to feel. 

So I dragged him, heavy,

to the barn, under stars like brides, like angels,       

believing you would come

save me.

Henry Wise is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA program. A writer across multiple genres, his poetry has been published in Shenandoah, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, Nixes Mate Review, and elsewhere. His nonfiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures. His novel, Holy City, was published by Grove Atlantic in June 2024.