Walking the byroad toward the brook
Past the roadhouse--kept up, I swear,
By the pulse of the neon beer signs
Lighting the slow day for the few men
Who are always inside--
Toward a paper mill no longer standing
But remembered in the name of a dead-end road
Draped in goldenrod and asters and phlox,

A young deer disturbed the silence behind me:

The clap of his hooves against the tar of the oily road
Awoke me from my revery and--
What can I say?--
The scent of wild grapes on a cool September evening
That deer, and slow-building clouds
Left me happy for the vastness of the world


And somehow reminded me of a Thanksgiving
Years ago
When I drove home in a thick fog
That cut me off from the world
And a deer ran along beside me.
I heard him. Felt him. Could not see him

Or anything else.

The solitude we shared was splendid.

It was splendid again on the byroad.

There was no fog.
There was everything. Clearly.
Eye to eye and alone

With all that is wild.