For hunters in Wisconsin, deer season began at the crack of dawn on Saturday, Nov. 17. It's a date on the calendar that moved Milwaukee poet Ed Makowski to write:
A squirrel bounding
through fallen leaves
is a deer
The groaning in the winds
of a birch tree leaning against
another shagbark hickory is
the growlpurr of a buck
seeking a female deer
The flickering ruffles of
polyester camouflage leaves
on the hood of your coat are
real leaves being crunched
behind you by a deer
The Woodpecker
pattering its beak
at beetles beneath the bark, are
antlers being rubbed raw
by a monster deer
The downshifting of a semi
traveling westward on highway K
is the guttural grumble of
a buck attempting
to charm a doe,
a deer,
a female deer.
The suddenly wind-tousled
brown husks of dangling
remnant leaves
don’t know it yet,
but they, too, are a deer
Oh, it was a deer, before
you glimpsed the
coyote arriving with curiosity
to you mimicking the call
of a female deer.
