Crowned

Crowned

© Joanna Yonder

I found the velvet from the big buck’s antlers last night.

It was lying like a lichen alongside a length of gambel oak, lifeless like an empty pod whose seeds have flown away.

What must it be like to have antlers growing on your head?
Like the dull ache of an emerging tooth, or like tingling antennae?

Remember with me:
antennae have been used by moths and beetles
long before you and I ever had the thought to truss up metal, wire it to the sky, and spread the branches wide,
catching messages that fly by on airwaves.

Velvet grew on antlers
all across the planet,
many eons before people began making fabric in its soft and yielding texture: velvet.

What I’m saying is, we were animal and insect and earth long before we ever were humans with a language. Sometimes we need to listen as
animals and insects, listen as earth,

to really understand.

No matter what we call them, antennae are at their best when keening to the tiny ancient songs of moths, I promise. Velvet is best when it is warm and russet colored,
aloft and living proud
on the crown of a buck mule deer,

Our entire galaxy glittering overhead, stories in the walking hooves below
and, too, the great wild heart inside the deer sending up blood and spirit,
blood and freedom,
blood and wildness.