This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and retired professor of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox
Depending on where in Pennsylvania you live, a bull elk—all 600 to 1000 pounds of him—may not be your idea of perfect beauty. But to poet Patricia Thrushart, every bit of this creature, standing 60 inches high at the shoulder, is majestic. Find out why in today’s poem, “Antlers.”
Patricia Thrushart writes from her home in the Pennsylvania Wilds. Her fifth book of poems, Goddesses I Have Known, from QPC Publishing, benefits a local domestic violence shelter. Patricia’s poems have been published in numerous journals. She is co-editor of the anthology series for North/South Appalachia and co-founder of Poets Against Racism & Hate USA.
In Patricia Thrushart’s poem “Antlers,” you’ll only find respect and honor. The author watches the elk with wonder and reverence, each line of the poem conveying worshipful awe. Even her heart and lungs are affected. With them, she yearns to be subsumed. Whether hiker or hunter, perhaps you, too, have stood close enough to see the elk’s antlers “soaring high above its back.” Perhaps you, too, hunger for such “space displaced by beauty.”
Here’s “Antlers” by Patricia Thrushart.
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It makes your heart
suddenly lurch,
as if your mortal body
and its cage of ribs
encased in skin and sinew
cannot contain it.
It wants to leap out,
breathless,
be subsumed
at the sight of an elk
standing simply,
its massive body balanced
beautifully on four frail legs,
and its turned head,
on its thick neck,
tapered and molded
and impossibly small,
bearing velvet tines
branched in veiny symmetry
and soaring high above its back.
O to carry such weight,
such nobility,
that a mere turn of the head
must be preplanned;
where the ripple of presence
goes beyond the boundaries
of the body
and extends into the space beyond:
space displaced by beauty.
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That was “Antlers” by Patricia Thrushart. Thanks for listening. With Poetry Moment, I’m Marjorie Maddox.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
