I’m looking for something for dinner when I find your heart 
in the freezer which reminds me of the morning I saw you 

out the kitchen window. You were lying in the hayfield, 
on the path you always take from the woods 

to the pond and back. With the highway in between. 
You were a beautiful corpse, your flank still warm,

a trickle of blood beginning to crust under your one nostril. 
Left where you were, the coyotes would pull you apart,

all for squeamish me to watch from the window. I called 
Christine. She took you home, hung you by your back legs 

from a rafter in her garage so she could make you into steaks 
and roasts. She called to ask if I'd like some part of you. 

By the way, she added, your deer was pregnant. 
(I never thought of you as my deer). 

When she suggested your heart, I said yes. Yes, because 
I loved you and all your parts and suddenly, 

your unborn fawn. I thought of eating your heart—I did. 
Christine says eating the animal you kill is how you honour its life. 

Last fall when you were grazing in the hayfield, you lifted 
your head and stared at me for the longest time. The clouds 

over our heads were swimming in your eyes. If stillness 
could be eaten, we dined together.

(Published in Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today, October 2025)

aunt nelly was a fitch from fingal 
small like a wren is small
inside her she carried 
an immense drawstring bag 
crammed with small kindnesses
her husband ingersoll was well-read  
a farmer with a butterfly collection
and a killing jar he kept on the kitchen counter 
he was born and died in the same house
painted once as high as he could reach 
without a ladder

late april snow covered the green grass 
the morning i dropped in for tea
a vise-like creation sat on the kitchen table
somebody had been using it to crack walnuts 
i tried it out a few times 
while aunt nelly boiled water
fussed with a plate of cookies 
uncle ingersoll called from the dining room
would you like to see the automatic nut cracker
 
he was using a walker so the trip through the kitchen 
down the back porch steps
across the wet lawn took a good half hour
the walnut cracker had been out all winter  
he kneeled 
tinkered with it a few minutes 
nelly yelled from the back door  
it’ll never work 

he reached for the switch 
            nothing 
plug it in he yelled to nelly
i took a step back 
alarmed that electricity was involved 

it started up right away
people miles away that morning
in shedden or frome
planting peas or leaf lettuce
likely straightened their backs
turned their faces to the southwest

but when uncle ingersoll dumped 
the pail of last fall’s walnuts 
into the large funnel-shaped pipe  
the trees the house the clouds 
the planets and all their moons 
collapsed under the weight of the din 
all creation tumbled together down the pipe
and cracked in a rupturous clatter 
i pressed the heels of my hands over my ears 
and squeezed my eyes shut
   
the machine broke up the shells 
spit them out one side
the meat of the walnuts dropped into
a small china bowl underneath 

uncle ingersoll reached down 
turned the machine off 
the silence was a solid embraceable thing 
i carried home     
sometimes i take it out and hold it
and dream of someday making something 
as loud and useful 
as the walnut-cracking machine

(Published in the Literary Review of Canada, March 2008)