by Stewart Alter
It’s not the motionless
museum beauty of the deer,
steadied to be studied,
but the stunning streak of the fox
stirring the landscape
that uproots me from routine.
I am always too late.
She appears unpredictably,
pauses to deliberate,
then flashes across the field
before I can fix that vixen in view.
So I now spend every day
waiting on the deck at dusk,
undistracted by the sunset
no matter how wondrous it is,
or by the sequenced stillness
of the deer, no matter how magnetic.
With early seating and the script in hand
surely now I’ll be ready for rhapsody,
to see beyond the perceptibly poised,
to view the movement
that informs formation,
to see her rush from the brush.