Backward Glance Poem by Cathryn Hankla

Dragging the ghost of the trees in my tarp, I look to stripped limbs'
jagged outlines against a clouded atmosphere.
My heavy-lidded day smells of mold and leaves slick with rot.
I should leave rumination alone, but I remember
how the deer's contortionist repose betrayed it.
Death first appeared at the edge of the bathroom mirror

while I brushed my teeth. A shift of focus from my own grin
to the torque of tawny neck over lean hock and foreleg
stretched my imagination and later my strength.
The deer's position on a mossy bed, the cleanliness of a fresh smile,

every tooth in my head a glistening measure, a scraped
memento mori. Like these leaves, the deer was pulled on a green
tarp, tipped onto eager earth away from the mirror's distortion
and toward the turkey buzzards.