Deer in Winter
- Deer in Winter
The Evergreen House Museum, Baltimore, Maryland
One way they enter is to pause,hooved, indelicate among the treeswhere elms and oaks rise in a remnant forest.Ears cupped toward the slightest sound,
the deer hear my steps, a misty gauzesurrounding them, like slow parentheses—I watch them browse for twitchy leaves and seed.Daily, they range across the mansion grounds.
A raised tail sends the signal flee to fawns—The herd thrives on common causepassed along by spectral kin: elusive, elemental.What wisdom do they share, silent and spellbound?
Here, traffic flows; you persist, a doe withdraws,her eye a text of unread codices. [End Page 154]
jane satterfield is the author of five books, most recently Apocalypse Mix, winner of the 2016 Autumn House Poetry Prize, selected by David St. John. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship, the 49th Parallel Poetry Prize from Bellingham Review, the Ledbury Festival Poetry Prize, and more. New poems may found in the Common, Nelle, Hopkins Review, and Interim. She is married to poet Ned Balbo and lives in Baltimore.
