Sometimes We Try by Judith Sornberger

          Mount Saviour Monastery, February 2020

The pasture snow is bright as an unmarked page
as I saunter past after a morning at the desk.
Fir trees in the distance could be a chorus
line of nuns in crisp white habits,
or anything else I might imagine. Except

dead ahead, on my right, I see the frenzied
jerking of a deer, her bleeding hind leg caught
between fence wires. My soothing words as I climb
the snowbank don’t fool her. She knows
my kind—the ones who build fences, shoot her sisters.

But as I strain to pull the wires apart, she drops
to her knees--waiting, perhaps hoping. Once
I catch my finger between the wires, panic
when they won’t release me. My pain must be
sharp as her fear, but I’m not the one bleeding.

When I release myself, I huff and puff
up the hill to borrow wire clippers.
Find my friend who drives us back to the deer.
All the while we hope she’s broken loose,
but, of course, she hasn’t.

The clippers are made for lighter wire,
but we take turns cutting, twisting, pulling—
surprised when the wire lets go.
The deer limps to a copse of trees,
and we wince to see her white bone.

The firs shiver in the wind, silent witnesses like us,
praying she’ll make it, knowing she probably won’t.
It’s cold. She’s in shock. Come darkness, coyotes
will hunt her. All night my pinkie finger throbs—
the welt a token of another creature’s terror.



Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). She’s the author of four full-length poetry collections and five other chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Presence, Windhover, and The Grotto and have received four Pushcart nominations. She is a professor emerita from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. www.judithsornberger.net