by Tess Gallagher
for Jane Mead
Stepping where they step
in the unhindered woods
where my neighbor and I agree not
to build a fence,
I startle the lone doe
from her kingdom of solitude.
Days since she informs every hidden cavity
of fern and vine with possible
trespass—but also profound stillness
I crave when she fails
to appear. A light-footed yearning
inhabits me, though it was
blundering flushed beauty
out. I lay down
my cities, rivers bereft
of their banks, snowmelt
and downpour where she pressed
the unsurrendered harp
of her body against moss. Vaults
of cement crack open. An arbor of blustering
neon goes dark in the borderland
of word-wrecked freedoms. Out of this
overlay of the human, the doe
uncoils herself with power
that is not retreat, just
the nothing-else-that-could-happen,
as my uninhabitable shadow
triggers her fear-plundered heart.
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