by Susan Olding
The doe stood at thruway’s edge. Fur – white-tipped.
Haunches – wide. Her back to traffic, but her eye,
alert, trained toward it. Speeding past her, strapped
inside my metal cage, preserving my
life, if not my youth, and contemplating
the future, I thought – Another deer, less
experienced, would not have braved that place,
or if she’d done so, might have lacked reserve.
This one, instead, in solitude, enjoyed a grass
unseasonably green, carving a path
on hooves both obdurate and delicate.
Not blinded by proximity to death,
nor, in desperate panic, running from it.
— from Juniper Volume 3, Issue 1