With The Deer Poem by Daniel Brick

I awoke this morning
in the darkness before dawn light.
Tendrils of an uncertain dream
webbed my eyes. They loosened
and vanished, then I saw the dawn.

I read the philosopher Algis Uzdavinys
for an hour of peace, until the day
announced its intention to stay
shrouded in overcast, with clouds
bunched in huge motionless masses.

Something rebelled within me, something
that desired another kind of light.
I left my apartment in a mission
I barely understood. I drove to
an urban park, and parked in an empty lot.

On a deserted lane, lined with bushes
and trees, I stopped abruptly: staring
at me curiously but without fear stood
an adolescent deer. We were fewer than
fifteen tremulous feet apart, I could

breathe her lack of fear. Three minutes,
give or take, we accepted each other's
stern scrutiny. The wonder of it filled
my heart, and I had to believe something
akin to wonder imbued her with the same poise.

I slowly edged past her. She turned her head
and followed my retreat until trees drew
a curtain between us. My hope was fulfilled:
a wild thing stood on common ground with me,
and never flinched nor ran. She welcomed me.

I walked on a boardwalk through a marsh,
the water completely covered by pale green
expanse of algae. Red-winged black birds
perched on the swaying water plants. All
was still. The only motion was my human self.

On the far side of the marsh, I was about
to re-enter the forest, but at the threshold
stood a mother deer in front of her two
offspring. This was no slumming adolescent,
taking a risk with her own being. This was

the serious business of survival. She raised
and lowered her head, again and again. Was it
a warning, or an appeal? I took it as an appeal:
I turned around and walked away, never looking back.
I thought, such is the entirety of things: a female deer

lets me pass, a mother deer blocks my way. On another
path, I crossed paths with a young mother and her two
children. I told her about the mother deer and her two
young just ahead. Before the mother could speak,
her daughter said with casual certainty,

'I know those two baby deer. They visit me everyday
in my yard. They chew on apples.' Then she skipped
ahead to join her brother. The mother shared a smile
with me, there was no need for speech. Rain was starting
to fall in heavy fat drops, and we went our opposite ways.

As I drove home, my smile did not fade: a young deer
had admitted me to the garden, in her luminous brown
eyes I was a just man. And I earned the regard
of a mother deer by withdrawing, simply by going
another way. I hope in some way the deer felt

my love for them, a pure love for wild things....