The doe’s gray coat blends into the November woods, her two grown fawns still brown. They nuzzle through the leaf duff, feasting on acorns.
white-tailed deer
I hear it before I see it through the trees, crackling and popping in the tinder-dry sticks and leaf litter: a small herd of deer.
From the vicinity of the powerline—a stripe of sunlight through the woods—the sporadic want… want… want of a buck coming into rut.
The sound of deer running through the woods, and from over the ridge, that highway whine: we race through the deserts of our own making.
When I come outside, four deer run off: two doe, a fawn, and a buck with antlers so new he doesn’t yet duck low enough to avoid branches.
In the springhouse marsh, 13 cattail spikes are turning brown. When I go over for a closer look, a deer pops her head up, swivels her ears.
A woodchuck waddles down the road, pausing every few feet to poke its head into the weeds. A fawn bleats up in the laurel. The sun goes in.
Cloudy and cool. Up to its snout in grass, a deer sneezes. The quiet squeaks of a hummingbird circling the beebalm.
My mind drifts. At what precise angle of sun, I wonder, does the light lose its magic? I glance over and meet a deer’s unreadable eyes.
Solstice sun in the treetops. The lilac quivers as two titmice move through, grooming it for insects. A fawn dances out into the meadow.
The air is close, but it gets even closer: first a shower, then a torrent. The wood thrush falls silent. The doe flicks water from her ears.
A doe strains to lick the flies…
A doe strains to lick the flies from the part of her back her tail can’t sweep, black riders unshaken by the endless tremors in her fur.
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.
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.