An inspiration, at last— the doe beneath the window. 

Present, grazing, honed, 

Sometimes accompanied, sometimes alone.  

And as I turned to consider the thought,  

I found her, there among the wild rye, 

As though beckoned by mere thought.  

 

Oblong ears, white flash like a blade of wind, 

Startled at every small word.  

What is she so afraid of?  

 

Not the black hulks, lazed from winter’s tease. 

They could tear away her pumping pulse, 

But she outruns their patience. 

She provides for the same mouths, though sharper. 

She keeps the same milk in her bones. 

 

Not the bladed jaws, nor their chorus of death. 

Their hunger surges like blazes, 

Suckling ash from the green and the grown, 

But fire cannot burn from a distance, 

And each paw is her caution to flee. 

 

Not the songbird, nor burrowed thing, 

Not the ants in their rows, 

Not the bees, nor the crows.  

Her dread settles deep, tuned to metal mouths, 

To the echo of thunder, to dismembered earth,  

To howls akin to no wolf.  

 

I watch, eyes sunk as a freshly skipped stone. 

She is moving grace… 

And yet, as the season comes,  

Paper tags are torn from bark, 

Each their own licence to kill.  

The thunder is cocked, and so come the howls.  

And though the sympathy ruins me, 

a hunger wakes for meat padding bone.  

 

We are like she: bright-featured, loving. 

Like she, we should live without a tremble, 

Without a flinch at figures unknown. 

Yet, despite all the preachers of love and peace, 

I shrivel inside when I turn to the East.