As If a Bird Flew By Me: A Novel

An Old Story

45 AN OLD STORY It is an old story. Wolf and deer, a chase. Take this image, the motion, the surprise of the wolf-chased deer, they cross the road/yard/field in a breath, a held breath— a grey and red blurring, slowed in memory— Catch the eye of the wolf—white sclera, black pupil (inside the uncolor, the earth goes on forever: black pupil held in your own pupil, image flipped upside down by the optic nerve, flipped back up by the brain: Look a wolf in the eye and you’ll see—) There’s only one pair of predator and prey, the constant duo of hunger and chase, the two propelled by non-thought, the sphere of going, so not to be gone–– No time to pause, the deer hardly notices you, you standing still in jeans and a green sweater, looking at the lake and thinking of bears and berries, or thinking how the great lake could be the ocean, how you sense a whale might breach off the coast in front of you, your Day Mind, saying, Impossible!, you shrugging it off, Slough off, you say— The deer pulls through all of this—the whale disappears, and your mouth forgets the taste of berries or the fear of spotting a bear Sasquatch-tall at the end of the road— No, you have the deer, bristle brown, white flag tail, agile and concentrating on navigating the scrub and pine, 46 zigzagging (who knows the woods better, who mapped this trail more times, wolf or deer? Who is more ladened by parasites , who more thin-ribbed?). How far have you run today? Was it close— Or, the deer, a break, then wolf? Perhaps they burst by and you don’t process what is happening until it’s over. Or do you know right then? Is it even a word, or more of an intuition, more of a premonition, guttural? Perhaps you were just down the road, feet up, eyes to a book or eyes to a nap, or eyes on the same water the wolf and deer follow in their periphery, the blue they probably never truly forget, a brisk and cold memory in the bones, a frozen wave in the winter, were you there? No matter, you have the sight of them, the scent. Forget about love, forget about food, forget about ever going back to work, you want to stay here, suspended on the edge of the lake surrounded by fern and red clay, bog and hawkweed, the spoor of raccoon and bobcat, a glimpse of the surreptitious. ...