WINTER SOLSTICE

                                   

                      

                                                    

                                   My wife looked out upon a single fawn

                                   that gnawed, unaware, at the hedge beside

                                   the rock garden on this first day of winter.

                                   

                                   “There’s something wrong with one of its legs,”

                                    she told me with a frown. As it grazed its way

                                    to the yew bushes along the front walk, I could

                                    see that she was right.

                                    The deer was young, a few months old at best,

                                    from its size, left hind leg hobbled a bit by

                                    what seemed a tumor that shackled her

                                    to her fate.

                                    The fawn foraged in solitude amid a carpet of

                                     snow, cast out perhaps from the herd to fend

                                     alone all predators, to ward off the dark, to

                                     die at last a solitary death and take with it                     

                                     the blight it bore.

                                     Was this the lone deer we saw below our

                                     bedroom window two nights past, feasting

                                     on the birdseed I had scattered beneath

                                     the feeder? We’d thought it odd to see but            

                                     one.

                                     She’d stood, legs splayed, nearly genuflecting

                                     as she fed, the nap of her young fur smooth

                                     and gleaming in the moonglow. We hadn’t

                                     noticed in that swath of silver light the knob

                                     that hobbled her, her outcast plight.

                                     As the shadows lengthen on this longest night,

                                     I’ll seed again the snow beneath the barren ash,

                                     will scatter far and wide the feed to brook 

                                     the coming darkness, the feeble light.