With what nature there is in us
an uneasy truce, we are
prone to consider what is natural,
as if it were.

A man appears to stop, the car
at the edge of his vision, drawn
to where the unlikely meets the abrupt
vertical of the apparent

green opacity left to forest, a wall
beseiged by the limits of its own
horizon: the neatly mowed suburban lawn
upon which has been placed

a house. Through an opening
light hangs with trembling leaf,
twin fawns, a week or two born;
the doe hidden within the verge,

or on the road nearby lies,
her milk-tits souring in the noon sun,
come to nibble the uncut,
tender stalks sprouting like hairs

between the lamp-black hooves
of the concrete, miniature six-point buck,
whose painted eyes
have not dropped their westward gaze

for years. The cold
untiring, ignorant head held high,
alert to the first breath of wind that holds
in its scent some, yet, unseen life

about to begin again. Some soon to be
dread portent’s proclaim of danger,
from which the man has run before,
and as, quickly, moving before, moves on.