Lessons from an Urban Childhood
 
Bambi taught me how to hunt,
how to hide downwind and how
to wait quietly at the meadow’s edge.
 
Bambi taught me how to listen
for the horns scraping against the brush
and the hooves leaving the moss, how
to watch with my hammer cocked
and the eye of my charge
chambered and ready.
 
Bambi taught me how to sight the scope
between my soul and my survival, firing
without remorse. Taught me mercy
and how to hone a blade throat-sharp.
 
Bambi taught me how to hunt.
And that night my family ate
deer heart for dinner.
 
 

                                                                           Published in Clockwise Cat