Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century

Targets

25 Targets When Johnson took him on a hunt for deer in Texas, Kennedy declined the rifle with a grin. And that said something of the man. Each time I pass a roadkill or an antlered stag spread-eagled on the tailgate of a truck, I realize that some see deer as so much venison—or carriers of lyme disease—or varmints too destructive to be spared. But there’s a grace about them when they graze and feed and leap that eases me. Then history intrudes. It shows how man the farmer-healer-teacher superseded man the hunter, but the hunter in him never dies. It leaves him prone to kill. From sport to war is not too far a leap for those who think of warfare as a sport where men are targeted as so much meat. Men’s flesh and deer pelt bleed the same. 26 The will behind the aim that finds it laudable to kill makes death the reason for the game. Bullets are blind. ...