mixed media (2-3)

Last spring, on a bank just up the creek, I found the smoothed and fur-dusted bed of a deer. Nested beneath low boughs, brush browsed back, the smell was still fresh. But so close, I thought, within sight of the cabin.

It had been a harsh season. Many deer were wintering down close to the valley bottoms and farms. Dawns, you would see them browsing a far corner of pasture, kneading up the snow.

Here, far enough in from the dogs, there was cover, fresh water... And the nights I sat at my desk unknowing, and the lamplight found its way through the frost-lit trees, what, if anything, did it mean to her --nipping at her winter coat to make a bed for the fawns, sharing our water for a time.

Tim McNulty