Gary LeBel

A Moment en Route

              While passing a wood 
it snags my eye, the running blur
              of a deer at dusk:
what shape-shifter pilots
that strident husk? 

            After many miles on the road and heading home with hours to go,

            when lost in a fog of idle thoughts or shaded by a little cloud of desire, throwing the die of memories down on the billiard’s felt of time,

            I welcome the spark of a deer’s intrusion, the fire in the blood of its run,

            its manitou hovering briefly after the deer has slipped away

            into the pines and thorny brambles of the Georgia backcountry.

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Notes:

manitou, Algonquian for a spirit or supernatural force

Image: Shika, 鹿(Deer), montage with calligraphy c. 2006.

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About the Author

Gary LeBel is an artist-poet living in the greater Atlanta area whose poems have appeared in journals throughout the USA, the UK, Japan, and India. He believes that art, or anything else worth doing, is a life-long pilgrimage.

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