Relics in these woods
are hunters’ wooden deerstands,
handcrafted and perched
up a tree by a hunter.
What if they could talk?
They would tell years of stories
of big, antlered bucks.
Crumpled by a shotgun blast,
field-dressed on this spot
before hunter drags buck out
to his pickup truck
for venison harvesting.
Maybe the antlers
saved, too, as a kill trophy.
On the other hand,
the stands tell tales of misses,
when bucks beat hunters.
Never leaving the forest
as the hunter does,
these stands are witness to all,
non-hunting tales, too.
They chronicle history
of this patch of woods.
So, when I saw one today,
I pondered what it had seen.
— Joe Sapia
Joe Sapia, 65, lives in the Pine Barrens around Helmetta, where his maternal side settled around 1900. These woods inspire much of his writing.
