Before the frost arrives, the doe listens:
not to the others’ playful, two-hoofed stomp
or their heavy, blowing snorts. Not November’s shotguns
crackling through leafless trees. No, she listens
to the air’s sting, the degree of warmth beneath bramble.
Her flesh attunes to change, measures humidity
and the sun traveling its path. Inside her
a hunger and a slowness. Tools of measurement.
She wanders the yard and loots the rose garden.
When the winds press cold
into her hot and matted, fur-honeyed flank
an instinct guides towards shelter
among the dead, dense raspberry thicket.
Stems snap with the authority of time.
There are words buried within us
that never approach what she knows.
Grey Sparrow Journal 