March 4, 2025: Beth Roberts, "V" & "Spotted Deer"

V

In just a minute I’m going out in the boat.

A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic.

I hear my grandmother in the white-throated sparrows.

In just a minute I’m going out in the boat.

And my grandfather in the red pines he planted, taller than four pickups end to end.

A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic.

And my father in the red pines he planted, now taller than he was.

In just a minute I’m going out in the boat.

And my mother in the memory she’s losing.

A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic.

I tell him I came up here to quarantine, the only one.

In just a minute I’m going out in the boat.

Excerpt from “June 2020,” On Natural Things by Beth Roberts, Harvard Square Press, 2024

Spotted deer

What do you call it when you drove with your dad out to the forties so he could see if you could see

deer, and you balanced coffee in teacups while the truck picked up ruts and put them back down,

because the forties were his and he knew every doomed jack pine, red pine, red anthill, badger hole,

blueberry bush, silver birch, back switch, backdrop, dropped antler, deer blind,

because he wanted it for you, which you saw from the window and sprung seat as you spotted deer,

but never loved enough till now—his reformed ashes

bits akin to bone, lying amid lichen in the rye patch he’d planted to draw the herd, hold them in his

sight, though oft distracted by the sunset on their fur and in the air?

From Like You by Beth Roberts, Fence Books, 2021

Beth Roberts is a poet and editor living in Marquette. She writes poetry books, chapbooks and micro-chapbooks, and has written bespoke poems and customized sonnets for pay. She is a Yooper.