50 Miles West of Abilene Texas November 7 2020
Because a deer on the interstate.I hit in the dark.And continued without looking.To think it quickly in the next world.The deer that made the dent.When later it was light.I found I could not open the doorbut crawled on the other seat and opened the other door.And saw the deer had dented the car and bent the headlight and front fenderand sent back along the first door and the second.A deer-head in the headlight swift as a comet falling back along the car.Gone before you think what to wish.Coming from the canyon.The pictographs in Seminole had gone there to see.A shaman wearing the head of a deer.Had traveled from the overhang of the cliff.I go to those places of the other world.To bring back my own.Belonging to nothing otherwise.The Savior a deer to me.As it was in the headlight slain on the passing of the cross.The door then opened to the other world.
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- August 24, 2024
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“50 Miles West of Abilene Texas November 7 2020” from PSALM TO WHOM(E): by Diane Glancy.
Published by Turtle Point Press on October 24, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Diane Glancy.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her latest books are A Line of Driftwood: The Ada Blackjack Story (Turtle Point Press, 2021) Jigsaw (Blackbead Books, 2022), Home is the Road, Wandering the Land, Shaping the Spirit (Broadleaf Books, 2022), Psalm to Whom(e) (Turtle Point Press, 2023), and Quadrille (Wipf & Stock, 2024). Glancy lives in Gainesville just under the OK / TX border on I-35 that runs from Duluth to Laredo. Currently she leads a cohort on writing at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. You can find more at her website, www.dianeglancy.com.
“A page-turner, Psalm to Whom(e) moves with vision and alacrity through its terrain of back roads, anomic landscapes, lost languages, loneliness, and God-hunger in its search for the various voices and guises of ‘the Whome who is supposed to be over all.’”
—Lisa Russ Spaar
“This dazzling variety of poems, proems, and creative nonfiction takes the reader on both an outward and inward pilgrimage from home to home. Driving, always driving, through sparse and lush landscapes, the present moment and memory inextricably linked, Glancy saturates her journey with Native wisdom and biblical story. She sews a quilt, stitching together the stories and meditations into a vast network of connections. It is more than masterful. It is a thrilling, electric ride.”
—Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
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