RICHARD SCHIFFMAN

Theology 101

Somewhere inside you a doe hides
in a canyon black as night,
in a backwood nobody knows.
You can spend a lifetime waiting
for the doe. It won’t show.
That is how you know it is there,
by its failure to appear—
the conspicuous absence of doe.
It’s the ache that never leaves you.
Unlike the doe which would scoot off
in a heartbeat or even sooner.
Because a doe is shiftier than air.
More likely it never emerges.
That way you’ll never lose it.
Never lose its absence is what I mean,
which is better than its presence,
more dependable and enduring.
The doe you need is not the doe
you know, but the doe you don’t,
and therefore cannot shoot,
being elusive. Not that you could shoot
a doe that wasn’t there, even if it was
(if you get my drift).
But the point is you would think
that you had shot it, even if you hadn’t.
You would become some kind of religious
fanatic, is what I’m saying,
and end up displaying the doe’s rack
above your living room mantle,
even though does don’t have racks,
and, moreover, there isn’t a mantel
in the world that is big enough
to display one, even if they did
(which they don’t) if you get my drift.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the devil.






Richard Schiffman is a writer based in New York, and a former journalist for National Public Radio. He is the author of two biographies: Mother of All, and Sri Ramakrishna, A Prophet For the New Age. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, The North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, 32 Poems, Rosebud, Valparaiso Poetry Review and many other journals. His “Spiritual Poetry Portal” can be found at: link.



Boxcar Poetry Review - ISSN 1931-1761