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Linda
Benninghoff
Four Deer
Today I walked past Mrs. Kyle's
And her daughter Martha’s house,
Down the block to the strangers’ wooded yard,
Where once four deer stood.
I waited for their stillness
And their shadows, their heads
Bent, looking, as if curious
About all they saw.
Last summer Martha rested,
legs crossed, hair
Curly, sitting on the beach
Talking to a group of
Her mother‘s friends, their backs
To the sun. Her
Mother always said hello to me
Before getting in the water.
Martha and I went swimming at different times,
Keeping up with the tides.
We did not know each other well and nodded
As we both sat
Beside the older women, listening.
When I heard she got cancer
Everything seemed to
Tremble.
The deer
Appearing in the woods
Stared at me as I
Walked by.
In that stare an eternity seemed to sit,
Death and heaven
And the stillness of God.
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Linda Benninghoff has been
published in many magazines, including Agenda and The
London Times Online. She has published two chapbooks,
Departures and The Street Where I Was a Child. She
translated "The Seafarer" from Anglo-Saxon; the translation appears
at www.electrato.com under Dialogue of Nations Through Translation. |
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