A Wildlife Photographer

Let's workshop a poem where a son reflects on his father's affinity for observing wildlife, an affinity the father was trained to express through a shotgun

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A Wildlife Photographer 

My father could drink his cheap beer all day, watching
wildlife shows from his forest-fabric chair. I sense
his November hunts were at heart a child’s yearning 
to take in splendors from secret spots of stillness.

Light footed on leaves, he would point out deer pebbles
and reconstruct trails. He would finger the fresh rubs,
oddly spry for not having drank. “See this, Mikey? 
Bucks scrape the velvet off their antlers. Itches ’em.”— 

“A doe,” he whispered at our spot one dawn. “A fawn.”
I was knocked out in our makeshift blind of branches,
but his elbow jabs insisted. “Look! She’s a beaut.
Pretty one,” he said in reverie. “Fuzzy still.

Op. She hears us. See her head cock up? Smells us too.—
Leave the goddamn chips alone a sec.—Hear that snort?
She knows sumpin’s up, Mikey. Might be busted. Fwhew!”
he puff-whistled with bared teeth, keeping her in place.

But then my father’s look went grave, his eyes glassy—
by some program planting the butt at his shoulder.—
He was brought into these woods by his own father. 
And they brought a twelve-gauge, never a camera.  

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This poem, in an earlier form, was published in That Literary Review 2 (2017), p. 54.