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| Cave Painting - Lascaux Bull - The Dordogne, France |
"The Hunt for Aldebaran:
Sighting Eye of Taurus"
was first published in
The Chariton Review
at Truman State University
in the Spring 2002 issue.
The Hunt for Aldebaran:
Sighting Eye of Taurus
James Hart
for Ethan Hart
We startle each other tonight,
rustles I hear in leaves could be
a nimble rabbit, hooves of deer,
all delicate creatures of the dark.
It’s my son come home fruitless
again, hunting deer after school.
He says he knows my orange glow
when I’m smoking on the porch,
but now my back’s toward his home
approach, northwest wind cuts us,
knives steering tiny balls of fire,
flicks of ember from my cigarette
rise and die as ash falls to earth.
He misses seeing my burning eye,
and I think I’ve heard ghost of harts
step from time’s intangible forest,
a dream of ancient stag browsing
leaves loosed from meteors’ limbs,
gut’s hunger feeding on these sere
symmetries of space and distance.
He doesn’t know I’ve hunted too,
watching Aldebaran rise over shed,
orange eye of Taurus watching us,
bull’s ear hearing us from Pleiades.
Maple’s antlers lock in combat’s ruts,
late leaves shed velvets black as night:
what the mind does to survive inside
time’s black cave hung with furs
is paint a bull and deer on stone,
know Orion rises and horizons die,
grimace in neolithic wind blown
here from ancient glaciers’ ages.
Hunting: long
watch under stars,
or stalking deer as woods give way
to night, we both listen for black
hooves’ imprints on soul or soil.
What string of stories will I tell
him while he sits stropping knives,
itching to flay hidden years away,
the hairy hide we call the night?
What threads unwind from maze,
what cautions for predation’s stealth
if I’m wrapped in black pelt of leaves,
his days gelded by north wind knives,
earth turning back on one orange eye?
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