Small Facts

The first one in late June and in tall grass

So from a distance looked as though

Some animal was down, a fox or dog,

Too in the open for good news.

Then walking closer what I found

Was just a fawn, mindlessly asleep,

Curled on itself and warming in the sun,

The mother gone.

First day a fawn

Survives without a scent for predators,

So this one slept the safer with the mother

Yards away, watching under low branches.

And then last week there was another.

And now this morning twins, this time their mother

Cleaning them while I watched from the porch.

This sort of thing occurs most every year,

As though there runs a close but ragged lineage

Follows itself season to season;

Or else it is a doe gives birth

Not to her fawn to but a place

Revisited year after year.

And there are other regions to my theory,

The whys one wanders into when

Encountering a buck who snorts and runs

Yet on another day, same place,

A heavy doe will drop her head and paw;

And there’s the tall one bumps the feeder with her nose,

Sticking out her impudent tongue for seed,

And staring through the window when the feeder’s empty.

Then the world of rutting comes around,

After which we have to rake, and prop the fences;

Other months the bagatelles through early vegetation,

As though we served a salad every year

And only ought to add some vinaigrette.

But this day, watching one more dumb show of

Brief urgency and birth, the mother

Washing down and bedding down her two

Till they were near invisible among dead leaves,

All was as unremarkable as ever,

Indifferent, really, if still vulnerable.

“All just a little too routine,” I said,

To nothing near enough to hear.