The Buck at Noontime,
by Patricia
Monoghan
Magic is something
you dont recognize
when it happens,
something that
ordinary.
Yes.
That is what you said,
afterwards.
Remember?
At dawn, at dusk,
across the nettles and willows,
under the sighing pines,
we would see
roe deer, fallow deer,
staring at us from the tall
dying grasssometimes
a single doe, sometimes
two or three, once
a herd of seven
but never
before
at midday
at the crossroad
a single buck
holding us with steady gaze
until you said
If I move will he run?
You danced in front of him.
I watched him watching you.
You called and sang.
He never moved.
In the long space
between us, the long time
between us, something passed.
What passed is the stuff
of legend. I could tell
it that way. I could say:
two children, lost in
the forest and crying
for home, were saved by
an angel of light; or
animals called to twins
in a stone town, called
them by secret names
into a magic forest; or,
a man and woman
sought initiation into
the languages of winds
and birdsong; these are stories,
true stories
told by those
who saw something,
something ordinary
--a buck
at noontime
at the crossroad
and knew magic,
and had no words for it
for all the stories
say the same thing,
all the stories tell us
how magic speaks:
in a voice so common,
so familiar, that we
create prayers and myths
to capture and belie its
sacred ordinariness.
Something happened to us:
We saw a buck
at noontime
at the crossroads,
we saw, at an ordinary
crossroads, the horned
god of the forest,
in blazing noon sun,
an ordinary buck
at the crossroads
of our lives,
at the days meridian,
in the dreamtime
of the day,
an ordinary road
and an antlered deer.
Something happened to us,
in that ordinary moment:
Oh! You have broken
your perfect silence,
you have spoken
in movement and stasis,
horned god of lifes changes;
you have shown us
the resurrection of death,
horned god of times passages,
you have shown us the way,
guardians of crossroads,
angel of blue flowers
height of the suns blaze.
Everything we feel is true.
Every day is magic.
Everything we feel is true.
Yes.
We remember.
Yes.
.
_____________
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.........
.
.
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