What I Want You to Remember

for my sister

What I want you to remember is not
these words I have written, but this:

One morning, out at the cabin, I
discovered what the deer do on winter nights

All around me, ten acres of crazy deer tracks
zig-zagging, criss-crossing every which way,
circling round me in the snow
in a giant’s game of “Farmer in the Dell”
till I was dizzy as they must have been
that night after all that whirling-dervish
dancing in the dark–

Must have been one heck of a game,
(hide-and-go-seek? Duck, Duck, Goose?)–

All these empty hoofprints left behind,
these silent, temporary (until the next snow)
testaments bearing witness to this
wild waltzing of hooves,
dancing circles around me.

Elizabeth is a former Adult Ed/ESL teacher, who went back to school at age 38 to earn a master's in teaching English. Her work has appeared in The Milwaukee Journal, Bramble, WFOP Poets' Calendar, Portage, and other small-press publications. She was co-editor and founder of Word of Mouth, a grass-roots literary journal.