The old stag went on,�. . .He can be killed like us. . . .�

She holds me on her shoulders to see him.
He stands on a balcony waving his hat--
Eisenhower, the old soldier, the President.
Mom likes Ike. Wisps of white hair
flank his scalp. He slurs his speech.

It doesn�t matter. It is May.
Later, I climb among apple blossoms,
while mother waters the gardenia
by our basement window.

I am seven, in third grade,
and Mrs. Darling discovers I read Dick
and Jane backwards. I spend most of June, July
and August reading Bambi the right way,
from left to right. I sit in our basement,
where I can see my father�s boney legs
plod back and forth across the lawn,
and my brother�s feet scurry by the window--
his fingers taunting me.

Alice, my tutor, a college student with a pigtail,
tells me to read a line:
He came into the world in the middle of a ticket. . .
Now, look at that word, Bruce. Could it be
�a ticket�? Her finger sits under the word.

My brother is at the window sticking his tongue at me.

Pay attention, Bruce, can it be?
Let�s break it down.
She goes over each sound. Th-ick
and e and t. I say �thicket.�
Good, read on:
in one of those
little, hidden forest glades which seem
to be entirely open but screened in
on all sides.

Bambi felt screened in, as I did. A magpie
talks to his mother who seems like my mother,
always on the go, and tells her to �pay attention.�
Bambi�s mom ignores the bird, calls it �stupid.�
�Stupid,� is a word aimed like a bullet
at me. That�s why I am here.

We read on and go over a forest of words,
hazel bushes, dogwood, blackthorn,
wood thrush, and fun words like
cooed, chirped and crackled
that sound as if they had wings
and, then there was incessant and agitation.
Alice teaches me to say everyone,
breaking them apart like acorns
and putting them back together.

My brother might be playing tag
in our backyard, but I have my own
game of tag, Alice snuggles next
to me. Gardenia flowers float
in a yellow bowl as I come up the stairs.
June spills over with words,
complex words, interesting words.

I want to pick up every one,
learn them all.

By July, the hunter comes into the story.
The words get easier to read
than Dick and Jane because
He was coming.
He was coming into the heart of the thicket.

I can read each one, each pronoun
capitalized like proper names are:

how terrible He looked. . .His pale face,
His smell, how He used only two legs
to walk. . .His two hands. . .
and the third hand. . .
isn�t attached. . .;
He carries it hanging over His shoulder
and He throws His hand at you. . .
He tears His hand off. . .fire flashes
and thunder cracks. He�s all fire inside.

It is like the News on the radio
about Birmingham and children
beaten by the men with batons.

I don�t want to read anymore.
Winter comes to words, to sounds
I do not want to pronounce:
loud clapping of wings�
gasps, sobs, flutterings. . .burstings. . .
running. . .to get away. . .skin split
and, the sounds of fire blurs
with the footfalls of the poachers:
Twelve times . . .He hurled it from
his Hands and Bambi�s mother
chides Bambi �Get away from me.�

Alice�s arm curls around my back:
We have to read on, Bruce, cajoling me
and then we will have chocolate chips
and go out and pick gardenias
for your mother who loves them

By late that summer,
when swimming pools close,
when the gardenia tires of blooming,
a stag enters the story, takes Bambi
aside to show him what remains of the hunter,
blood oozing. . .drying on His hair and around
His nose and His hat to one side
on the snow as if His head were split in two. . . .

The stag tells Bambi to look carefully,
to see how He wasn�t all-powerful,
how everything that lives and grows
doesn�t come from Him,

then says, �There is Another who is
over us all, over us and over Him,�
as if by saying that he explains everything
as if there was nothing else to say,
as if the story had ended. Speechless,
Bambi watches the stag wander away,
and he is left alone. No father. No mother.

Bambi is no longer a boy, nor does he think as a boy.
At the end of the story, he speaks like the old stag.
He rebukes fawns who call �Mother, mother,�
(as I do when I fall of my two wheeler)
�Your mother has no time for you now.�

Bambi gives them his words, turns his back,
as if they were already causalities--
one of Them--and vanishes into the forest.

By the last chapter, I know what each word means,
of vanished, how it disappears,
of the violence and its sounds,
of loss and of Him
and what He can do.

I pick one gardenia in October.
Tired apple leaves fall, unspeaking.
The winter drags silence over us.

The next spring my mother insists
I tear the gardenia out, toss it in the side lot.
It�s dead, she says. But I dig it up and carry
it to a sunny spot and plant it
by a hazel nut and a lilac,
words I know and trust
to make it come to life, to nourish it
as good words do.

April, May and June-- glossy leaves never appear.
I stand by it, talking to it as if its sticks
are a kind of Jesus, something I can
bring back from the dead. But it never
comes back just as Eisenhower,
waving the frail stick of his hand
from the window at Walter Reed,
after his third heart attack, never
comes back.

And the News turns
toward Kennedy---shot;
then others�shot
as if it is open season for murder,
thousands dead, thousands of words said,
not new words, tired words
like words the old stag uses to explain
to the poor Bambi how it all makes sense�

words like His and Mine, and Theirs
and Ours, simple ones to use because�

Oh, Bambi�what becomes of us?

How easily we turn our backs on
all the wondrous words--
the precious ones we straggle
from the thicket and startle
to life, the ones who never
forget us as much as we
want to forget them
as if they are unwilling,
as we should be unwilling, merely
to vanish into the forest. . . .


�2007 by Bruce Spang