Deer boy

 Deer Boy

John Clare Stokes

Deep in Impassable Bay 

the Deer Boy lays beneath 

Palmetto and pine straw

Spots upon his yearling

Back blending with the

Sun specks, as he curls in slumber, never really sleeping, always attune to the sound

of the baying hounds or 

the panther sneaking around.

It was not always so with his

offspring, for one day long

ago a most peculiar thing 

occurred at the mobile blood bank on Baya when this great, great vagrant, decided upon a transfusion to make some money, and in the confusion, the neophyte technician stuck the needle and drew the blood from the buck upon his hood. It was this blood that went into his great, great granny and in the ensuing next, next conception, there came forth the deer boy, more at home within the bay than on  the Baya, a new breed if you will, one who had no heart for the kill, the trophy tackydermy  head over the mantle, the four wheelers in the yard, the hounds in the pen, the feeders, the corn plots, the tree stands, the whole durn things. And so they hunt this deer boy relentlessly, knowing this deerboa virus cannot exist in a world among us of men who live upon the venison. It would upset the very balance of their nature, to nurture, to not dwell continually, thinking, plotting, savoring, striving, killing. And so the deer boy dwells in two worlds, both of which he knows would have him either raw, fried, stewed, jerked, smoked, bar-b-queued, skewed or simply shot for the sport of it and left for the turkey vultures.