Judith Sornberger elaborates…

Practicing the World

HAPPY HOUR

The more I talk to people who’ve lost loved ones, the more apparent it becomes that—despite our beliefs about the afterlife—many of us watch for messages from our departed beloveds, signs that they not only continue to exist in some form, but also that they continue to love us. After my mother’s death, my husband Bruce called me to the window whenever he saw a cardinal—the bird Mom said visited her whenever she needed cheering. “Jude, your Mom’s here,” he’d call, and I’d come running to greet her. So it was only natural that I would hope that, after Bruce’s death, he would return to me, however briefly, via the natural world and its creatures.

Ever since the first snow

following your death

deer have been appearing

in our yard around the time

we’d return to the fire

to drink martinis.

When the first pair emerged

in their dusky coats, one gazed

so long into my eyes

I almost believed I’d entered

the dream I’ve been craving —

the one where you return

in a disguise I see right through.

In our early days I said you seemed deer-like

with your fawn-dark eyes, delicate wrists.

What about my study biceps?

you asked, flexing.  Each night I enter sleep,

ears perked for your laughter

or for the soft crush of hooves on snow.

I drift back to the earliest days

of deer and human,

through hunger and wonder,

to the magic of sudden apparition

under the opal moon’s hypnosis.

Back to the ancient belief

that a deer’s luminous leap

could leave this world

and land in the next.

This afternoon when I found an antler

in the snow-dazed garden

I didn’t recognize it.

Rib-length, it was pronged

the way I pictured your bones

when pain pierced you from within.

Judith Sornberger