A small ichneumon wasp alights on a porch post, tapping and listening for signs of life. Up in the woods, a deer’s explosive snort.
deer
May 16, 2010
At daybreak, a small deer leaps and twists like a bronco with an invisible rider, then careens through the purple haze of dame’s-rocket.
April 21, 2010
A scarlet bough at the woods’ edge: I peer through binoculars at the first red maple keys. Deer straggle by in their ragged spring coats.
March 25, 2010
I watch it grow light, then start to grow dark again. A rustle in the leaves that starts as the footfalls of deer turns to rain.
March 22, 2010
Rain from what must be thin clouds. The sunrise glow lights up a deer at the wood’s edge, bright as litter against the brown leaves.
March 16, 2010
Four deer in the yard at daybreak, their pelts still bearing the imprint of the ground where they slept. I sneeze. White flags of panic.
February 20, 2010
Fresh excavations in the yard—a puzzle. Have the deer developed a taste for myrtle, the green of its leathery leaves under all that snow?
February 18, 2010
The dog statue in the yard is still buried except for its vigilant tail. On either side, the excavations of deer.
January 9, 2010
The wind has erased all but three footprints of a deer trail across the yard. In winter, you don’t connect the dots—you supply the dots.
December 30, 2009
Cold—the porch boards pop under my feet. A yearling doe walks by with her fur puffed out. But the stream’s gurgle remains unmuffled by ice.
December 23, 2009
Four does pick their way down the road, file into the woods, and surround a small rhododendron. “Stop eating that!” I yell. They bound off.
November 30, 2009
The opening day of rifle season. Deer run back and forth through the laurel—each shift of the wind must bring a different human’s stink.
November 17, 2009
A doe flees the urgent attentions of the resident 6-point, his burp-like grunts. Overhead, the loud cry of a crow chasing a hawk by itself.
November 15, 2009
After last night’s rain, everything glistens but the four gray forms of deer beneath the lilac, their thin clouds of breath.