Carolyn Oliver

Poem with Koi, Oak, and Reindeer-Hedgehogs

for H, by request

Whether antlered hedgehogs or spiky reindeer,
somehow your quiet boy-wisdom 
knows the animals as kin: ones who shield 
vital weakness with the impenetrable
forests of their bodies. Listen:
no birds. A glint of taiga dips into sun
but the wind says wolves are coming. 
The reindeer nose their young 
together, iris-eye of their cyclone, 
then spin like Catherine wheels,
or time-lapsed stars over a desert I want 
to show you. Imagine touching the snow 
compressed by their circling, its slippery gloss 
almost melting under your fingertips. 
It would shine as the surface of a pool
where piebald koi, forgotten, eddy the deep
water, grow magnificent, need 
no keepers except the ringing oaks
whose branches curve and overlap, 
wreath to keep the wrong eyes out. 
Dearling, I too am only a creature
learning what it means to make my limbs
a shelter, wondering that my life should orbit
your tender neverending.

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