Just Before Dawn

The Pinewoods

Just before dawn
three deer
came walking
down the hill

as if the moment were nothing different
from eternity–
as lightly as that
they nibbled

the leaves,
they drank
from the pond,
their pretty mouths

sucking the loose silver,
their heavy eyes
shining.
Listen,

I did not really see them.
I came later and saw their tracks
on empty sand.
But I don’t believe

only to the edge
of what my eyes actually see
in the kindness of the morning,
do you?

And my life,
which is my body surely,
is also something more—
isn’t yours?

I suppose the deer waited
to see the sun lift itself up,
filling the hills with light and shadows—
they were leaping

back into the rough, uncharted pinewoods
where I have lived so much of my life,
where everything is so quick and uncertain,
so glancing, so improbable, so real.

     – Mary Oliver –

Photo: Oneida County Snapshot Wisconsin Trail Camera

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