Sara Moore Wagner

Our Father as Actaeon

Just after we were fed and bathed, safely
sleeping in our rough beds, he’d wake us

to go back into the forest. We could feel
with our noses where the path was,

where he walked. We knew him, even when he’d soak
his vest in urine, call every creature in. We’d get to chasing,

carry turkeys in our mouths back to the cabin
where he’d gut them, hollow their bones to make calls

which sounded just like those turkeys.
Imagine being called by your own bones.

Is this the part where we are supposed to thank him
for the rest he’d give us after, the plates of roast turkey

placed lovingly at the foot of our beds, for the old boots
we’d chew into nothing. How long until he called us

with our own empty bones. We’d curl into him,
still. I don’t know why except

there is always something beautiful about a man who wants
so little: good dogs and open land, a man who can take

a gun and fire and hit something, a man who looks
into a chink in the trees and finds a clean body of water.

What did he sully, you’ll say. When our father changed,
even though we did not see what happened, we knew his body.

He lengthened, thinned out, his face sharp, those eyes–
what he’d sacrificed to run wild. Yes, we knew him,

and we tore his heart out with our teeth,
our sister cut clean his head and it rolled like a drum

of wine, split open. We broke our father, or so
our grandmother says. Looking back, it was our nature,

what we did to our father in the woods
when we did not recognize our father–stripped him,

our coats wild tendrils, rubbery and unwashed,
as we always were when he’d return us to our mother.

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022) Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies. Find her at saramoorewagner.com.