The Words of Certain Animals

by Philip Vassallo

Of all the mistakes we’ve made together,
we remember best our promise of love.
We walk away, but what we said pierces our memories
as the arrow does the deer whose toughened skin
now aches against the spruce trunk
or the bullet the grouse flapping wildly
to sustain the swirl of the last light’s rays.

Our good love--and even our bad--
springs from promises whispered or cursed,
accepted or denied, kept or broken.
How strange, we animals, ascribing words
to the space our bodies take
and time our voices make,
as though we are the hunter

releasing bow, pulling trigger.
Yet we know: to hear the deer succumb
in the crush of pine needles
or the swash of water against the reeds
as the grouse floats dead
is to forget nothing.
And this is how we remember this us.

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