Errand
The fawn was
born beneath the hydrangea I had mistaken,
for a year, as a young oak.
I squatted there. No
fear. It lay alone
in the leaves, and at my near touch a tuft
of its skin (you couldn’t
call it
hide, barely fur, still birth-
smeared in smatters
of pale gray spots)—
one tuft of skin quivered, as
though cold.
Even this first day
the doe had gone to find herself
something to eat
in a better yard. Error on
error, a life amasses.
Do you believe
the old poet?—not
to be born is reckoned best
of all.
Well, let’s ask
the birddog gagging at his chain
two yards over, bloody with boredom.
Ask the night-
black vultures, kettling
over the neighbor’s burn pile.
I had somewhere
to go. I don’t know where, but
how could it
matter, so much, to go?
Smell of snow an hour
before it falls,
then doesn’t. Soft leather
nose of the fawn, wet in my palm
where it nestled its warm
jaw in. To make
a cathedral (I should have stayed) of such things . . .
