Poetry
SPRING 2024Readying the Return
by HEATHER BOURBEAU
Deer do not like the scent of human hair.
Farmers scatter clumps to guard crops and roses.
I shed while walking, each strand whiter, bold
against the apple and jade and mulch.
Deer do not like the scent of white sage.
I cut the salvia I had planted to purify
the air that hangs between my home and my neighbor’s.
I yank long, dying stalks, pause to breathe in leaves,
fresh and dried, deep into my lungs, and worry
the leftover stump. These are precious now:
refuge and connection, the stag and the doe
who once shared this ground.
Deer do not like the scent of blood meal.
A dying cricket clings to my door, falls
to my welcome mat. I wipe sweat from my brow,
run a hand through my thinning pate, and hope
I have not unwittingly laid too many amulets,
cast too many spells,
heedless of their needs
and my own.
Heather Bourbeau
Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin, and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her latest poetry collection, Monarch (Cornerstone Press, 2023), examines overlooked histories from the US West.