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Written Deer

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
—Wisława Szymborska

My handwriting is all over these woods.
No, my handwriting is these woods,

each tree a half-print, half-cursive scrawl,
each loop a limb. My house is somewhere
here, & I have scribbled myself inside it.

What is home but a book we write, then
read again & again, each time dog-earing

different pages. In the morning I wake
in time to pencil the sun high. How
fragile it is, the world—I almost wrote

the word but caught myself. Either one
could be erased. In these written woods,

branches smudge around me whenever
I take a deep breath. Still, written fawns
lie in the written sunlight that dapples

their backs. What is home but a passage
I’m writing & underlining every time I read it.

Maggie Smith is the author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017), The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press, 2015), and Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005).

Themes

About this Poem

"I was reading Szymborska when I came across this line: 'Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?' The question made me want to push further into the setting—the written woods—and to consider what it means to both create and experience (or write and read) a place. I draft all of my poems longhand, often writing very quickly, and in my messy half-print, half-cursive handwriting, world and word were almost indistinguishable. As the poem came into focus, this conflation made its way into the poem’s argument."
—Maggie Smith

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More by this poet

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.

Maggie Smith

2016

Voting-Machine

In 1899, Lenna R. Winslow of Columbus, Ohio, applied for a patent for a “Voting-Machine.” He had created a mechanical system that adjusted the ballot the voter would see based on whether that voter was a man or a woman.
—David Kindy, Smithsonian.com

When you enter the booth
through the door marked

ladies, listen for the click
and turn—levers and gears

designed to conceal.
Don’t trouble yourself,

they say, with the say
you aren’t allowed to have,

Maggie Smith

2020

Starlings

The starlings choose one piece of sky above the river

and pour themselves in. Like a thousand arrows

pointing in unison one way, then another. That bit of blue

doesn’t belong to them, and they don’t belong to the sky,

or to the earth. Isn’t that what you’ve been taught—nothing is ours?

Maggie Smith

2018

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Written Deer

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