My Heart in the Garden - Poetic Reading
Channel: Petite Porch Performances
Date: 2023-02-18

My Heart in the Garden

This is how I want to be remembered. Please open Indian Animal Fables to page 133. On the page is a deer. Flip a few pages back, not forward. Eyes light on a single word ― tawny, as in tawny fawn taupe. It’s the first in a poem’s list of fabricated egg colors. Now put the book away. 

The still image of the young dear, the dear dead deer that was in my garden haunts me. You would think she couldn't pursue me in my dreams with her one hind hoof sheared-off clean. What predator engine could do that. And for the life of me, why hobble into my yard. Why here. She says to avoid all the dogs around me. Could I give her some measure of comfort. I talk to Schrodinger’s cat. Cold comfort until I saw her muzzle nuzzled exactly like that. Pressed into the wall. There she is. Arriving too late. Shrouded in moonlight. Subliminal screams. It goes on like that. Does knocking on doors. Moving on.  

Five houses down and two across. There’s Charlene. I take Indian Animal Fables with me seeing as coincidences are hard to ignore. Hoarse voice after hours of wading through deep insights and an ancient’s so-called sage advice. There’re even some weighty words about what to do with a wayward wife. Charlene sits attentively as she can no longer speak coherently. Mostly she listens with her hands giving measures to times long since past. Sitting there so neatly layered: black tee, blue flannel, black hoodie, blue jeans, black, red and white striped socks and. You get the picture. We read tales within tales.  Of Golden, a teacher mouse and several student deer, a flashing turtle, a flock of netted doves, and then there was Stammer, a crow.

Let’s see C. G. Jung’s synchronicities shadow me home. A flattened deer mouse is pasted fresh to the road. Fades of red-breasted robins, snakes, chameleons and untold toads might not haunt the doe. Fabled insurances ring in my hollowed ears. I sigh, go inside and collect garbage bags to place outside. The refuge and the waste.

Please take this picture with you. Her crumpled side. Her eye and nose indented, her lips too. Kindly recall her missing hoof. Gently, I touched her death for I could not smell her when she left.

― Nancy Sendler, February 13, 2023

"Brilliant! Your work is really quite different, a new kind of genre which everyone ought to be really excited about.” Professor David A Kolb, Bates College philosophy dept. chair (retired) and hypertext fiction pioneer compared my work to 20th century, classical music composer John Cage’s genius, experimental and influential compositions. “Nancy writes poetically, ironically, in deeply interconnected ways." -  https://dkolb.org/

Please help fund my poetry, videos, musicals love stories and other Petite Porch Performances creative endeavors via my Go Fund Me campaign - 
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A NOVEL MODEST PROPOSAL – Interactive eLiterature Repertoire of Cyber Satiric Love Stories.
Curated by Petite Porch Performances & Nine Fools Wise.

∞ The Case of the Disappearing Dandelions – A Musical Mystery (PDF)
∞ Musical Trilogy 20/20 – Three YouTube Playlists (Textless)
      • Independence Day 20/20 – A Musical Journey
      • US Election 20/20 – A Musical Celebration
      • Holiday Lights 20/20 – A Musical Flight (Gift)
∞  ANMP Sneak Preview Chapters – Title & Prelude and Rabbit & Violin (PDF)
∞  Pandemic Survival Guide – A Musical Adaptation (Peekaboo PDF)
∞  If God – A Musical State of Mind (Peekaboo PDF)
∞  WHY – A Musical Revolution
∞  Unboxing Time – A Musical Museum
∞  Glorious Goodness Goddess Ginger Snaps – The Musical Recipe (PDF)
∞  A Novel Modest Proposal – A Musical Illumination (evolving)

Nancy Sendler & the divine feline cupid kitty Hazelton
Poet & New Media Writer, Conscientious Coincidence Collector, Constellation Dancer, Dreamer & Dandelion Lover

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyHLtilmsYDwpIDp6UDICPw
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancysendler/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/NancySendler

Image ― Petal Deer by Ellen Jewett 2012