New Writing from Walker Valley: Slipping Up

We are proud to share a new piece by Jeremy Lloyd, co-director of the Tremont Writers Conference and Manager of Field Program and Collegiate Studies at Tremont Institute. This poem first appeared in the September 2024 Big Game Edition of Gray’s Sporting Journal. Read more of Jeremy’s work.

Slipping Up

A short walk to the box stand
beneath a fingernail moon
as the dying sun bleeds across
the sky at the close of the year.

Then begins the waiting and watching
while feasting my eyes on the canvas
of snow and the saplings and thorn bushes
overtaking the field year by year.

At the same moment when the day’s
last gasp of light grows bright,
a whitetail steps out of the woods
and suicidally ambles straight toward me.

Hours ago, I spotted coyote tracks
on the surface of a frozen puddle,
its comical prints revealing where it slipped
again and again before its paws found purchase.

Yet it’s no laughing matter inhaling the scent
of black powder while pointing the muzzle
of my flintlock at the doe’s velvet coat in hopes
of filling my freezer with meat for another year.

Already I am congratulating myself
for my accurate and merciful aim.
But no venison will grace my freezer
because in my impatience I fire too soon and miss.

The year will thus end with crimson
painted only in the sky,
and the new year will begin with disappointment,
though only a little.

For I will not go hungry and a creature
will go about her business, and the gift
of breath lavished on each of us in this life
keep on giving this winter night.

—

Cover image by Anthony Rampersad, 2024 Autumn Brilliance Photography Workshop participant