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.
deer
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.
November 14, 2009
Halfway up the ridge, a flashlight bobs through the trees, stops, goes out. Then the rustling thuds of hooves in dry leaves. Then silence.
November 11, 2009
An eight-point buck struts through the neck-high meadow, stirring up sparrows and goldenrod fluff, lifting his tail to shit while he walks.
November 5, 2009
I hear the grunting of a buck in rut, but see only a grown fawn chasing a doe. As they pass below the porch, I hear the bleat in his voice.
October 28, 2009
In the pouring rain, a six-point buck rips leaves off a lilac branch that the storm broke down, his antlers the same color as the break.
October 27, 2009
A yellow barberry bush at the edge of the woods trembles violently: two deer are stripping the fruit from its thorny branches.
September 23, 2009
At first light, the soft wickering of migrant wood thrushes. A deer snorts three times, and suddenly I’m seeing a bear in every shadow.
September 11, 2009
Riddle me this: Because of the heavy acorn crop, next summer we will see more roses. And this: the oak forest moves north on corvid wings.
September 9, 2009
The doe is turning from the top down, like a mountain: summer’s red has receded into her legs and belly. On the fawn, just five faint spots.
August 29, 2009
I glimpse the mother doe and her fawns running just inside the woods’ edge, hear the clatter of hooves going past. A minute of almost-sun.
August 23, 2009
Halfway up the ridge, the hectoring alarm-calls of a squirrel. A few seconds later, a deer joins in: explosive snorts. The sun comes out.
July 30, 2009
Glory be to God for punctuation: the fawn’s spots glowing in the gloom, drifting insect-motes, garlic in the yard, a ten-second rain.