An hour before dawn, a deer-shaped shadow drifts out of the woods, apparitional against the snow, like the photographic negative of a ghost.
deer
11/26/2008
Enough snow now to make the ground a blank page for the calligraphy of weeds and the meandering tracks of birds, the prints of their wings.
11/12/2008
Two white-tailed deer leap through the dried goldenrod and asters beyond the springhouse, surfacing, diving—dolphins in a brown sea.
10/27/2008
The oaks are finally coloring up, and rattle instead of rustling in the wind. But no rain of acorns this autumn, few footfalls of deer.
7/28/2008
A patch of a deer-tongue grass a mere three feet from my porch—how come I never noticed it before? Am I too busy to watch the grass grow?
7/11/2008
A high-pitched, terrified bleat. Half a minute later, the alarm snorts of an adult deer. Sun in the treetops. The snorting goes on and on.
5/11/2008
Sunday, and one can hear between bursts of oriole song the creaking of wings, the drone of a bumblebee, a deer snorting a quarter-mile off.
4/22/2008
In the half-light, the faint crackling sound of a deer eating a rose bush. A lone Canada goose flies over, honking enough for a whole flock.
4/19/2008
Over the dawn fusillade of woodpeckers, I hear the distant gobbles of a turkey. Five deer graze below the house. The doves make moan.
4/17/2008
Fresh from their beds, two deer come out of the woods and stand blinking at the new green grass. One scratches her belly with a hind foot.
3/22/2008
Five inches of fresh snow, the kind that clings to every twig. I catch a movement up in the woods: a deer raises its tail to take a shit.
3/4/2008
Rain and fog. A robin drops into the barberry bush, tut-tutting. Up in the woods, two deer stand with their heads buried in the soft snow.
2/24/2008
Cold, clear, and still. Three dark silhouettes of deer half-running, half-dancing through the laurel with the sun-flooded powerline beyond.
2/18/2008
Just out of sight through the dripping woods, something dangerous must be passing: a succession of deer blast its odor from their nostrils.