My thoughts wander backward through events as I drive
home late from a busy day. One wrong
word said, but no real harm done. A new “wife”
joke I have already forgotten how to properly assemble. Nothing on the jetliner that vanished in the
air after leaving Malaysia for China.
The songbirds once again frenzied in daylight trees.
Entering the ranchlands, my headlights brush a
golden fringe across last year’s tawny grass just beyond the winter-plowed
shoulders of the gravel road. On the hills
and along corners, the beams of light slit open the cobalt darkness to reveal green
entrails of bull pine, juniper and sage.
The roadway stretches out ahead of me—stark and
friendly at the same time.
Suddenly a bouquet of reflective eyes springs forth
from below a cluster of trees. Mule
deer. A dozen or more bedding together, pregnant
does no more than twenty feet off the road.
The night closes around them again as I drive on, up the last hill, and
then to my house, right there where it belongs, below what seems a fountain of
stars frozen in place in the endless night sky.
--Mitchell
Hegman
I'll always remember that time I was in your kitchen, it was sundown and there across the window above the sink was a deer staring right at me.
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