Poem: A Visitation

Random Acts of Poetry

A Visitation

He’s here again, nosing out of the woods,
testing the evening lawn.
Who could shoot him in his tawny pause,
shatter his heart or pierce

that swooping pylon of neck?
The thin, impossible chic of those legs,
those velvet-swaddled horns—
Plato spoke of such perfection.

A deer visits and grace overflows,
cleansing a tainted day.
It’s not that I bow before nature
or adulate elegance, or see in this a sign.

It’s just that here, now, time rests
and I forget all pretense and irony.
With his stately gait, his intricate crown,
he could be one of the mythical kings,

taking a numinous form,
doing me an improbable honor--
me alone. Stupidly, I shout "look!"
He looks up and is gone.