Reindeer Necromancy Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If I raised their reindeer from the dead
The forest would die in soon processions,
The rains would come but have no matter,
Being for I am quite different from the boys in town.
If they knew my heart, they would play
Another game, and try to tame me with gifts
Of seeds, and show me pictures of their
Mothers’ legs they keep well beneath the beds,
Or tease me from the crooks of trees where
Apples grown like winsome cheeks,
But I could take it all away, if their teasing continued
The trysts of evening’s fermentations, the love
Affairs on aeroplanes. With a spanning sough,
My hands in the air could awaken migrations of mauve
And lilaced sorrows, the antlers’ crux of moss
And rime, the ancient blood of oilslicks; their eyes,
Their eyes are even dusk, and the forest is weeping
Its good-byes, if I should pray and kneel by the
River’s silver knife, their kind would rise and where
We went in misty crew, death would fingerprint
The golden throats of song-birds and paralyze the
Beautified Olympics of her springy boughs,
All the same, until her eyes became a perplexing well,
And the high school a boggy plague.