Deer

By Trinity Williams

Dear you, Dear I

Deer meat in winter time,

running fast, through tall grass with white

men who lurk to hunt you and hang your head high.

Dear me, Dear mine, please be in before the streetlights,

summer’s here and they spray guns that don’t hold water,

but instead birth the tears that our mothers cry,

or a young daughter navigating through a cold world without a father.

Deerskin, black men, brown eyes so alike,

same story, different season, hunted and killed for no reason,

both left on the side of the road to make examples

of those that are left to handle the unbearable fate

if we are not cautious or careful.

Dear deer, so majestic, beautiful, and calm,

I ask when you see me that you do not run…

you and my kind relate back to generations of ancestors,

from the woods to the plantations…

see, all you know to do is run and hide and live and die,

like past deer souls, like my black folk.