Take Heart

and liver and bone and fat and poems

The sun went down at 4:15 and I was suddenly scared, suddenly in this very small, but wall-less room - a room I’d been in before, but couldn’t remember how I’d ever gotten out. Winter - it’d come, overnight and devoured the day, or at least the vital parts, those few hours when my blood really pumps - late afternoon, evening, dusk - all swallowed, now, by night, like a wolf tearing into it’s prey and going straight for the liver. I panicked and looked for a door and a friend, to slow my pacing, said, “Take heart”. I’ve been accused of interpreting words too literally, and they’ve been right. I took a heart from a whitetail deer, and lit a fire.

I did this two nights in a row - doctor’s orders, maybe witch doctor, but whatever, doctrine of signatures till I die. I could feel the warmth of blood returning to my greying face and fingers. It was working. It always works.

Every year I tire of the sun, chasing me through August, September, squinting, work doubled with the weight of my sweat, and I think, I can’t wait, I can’t wait to be cold. I’d forgotten, again, though, that cold comes hand in hand with darkness, and to face a perpetually blackening night, takes guts.

We sliced the liver of a young buck, the ruby-beetroot-deep bruise-red you always want your tomatoes to ripen to, but they don't, and seared it with onions and fat and ate it with our fingers from the skillet. We took odd, intimately interior bits of deer, sheep, pig and stuffed them into long intestines, tucked them beneath the crusts of game pies, and ground them, balled them, browned them and bathed them in blood red sauce. We roasted and simmered bones. We rendered fat into tallow and lard and I finally felt my carnal self readying for the big night.

I moved to the armchair to metabolize and tend, now, to the vital functions of my mind. A one, two of something old and something new usually puts the paddles to my pouting spirit so I close my eyes and relive my past lives and remember Baron Wormser.