Ghost Deer

A little light was left,
enough for the ghost deer.
We stood by the fallow
corn field, she and I,
listening until they appeared,
blinking, two, four, then seven
or eight, then fewer, finally just
the color of evening, muted, stretched.

Now it's late afternoon, two hidden birds
screech across the head high corn.
I stand where we stood.
The finches drag yellow over the
soft open thistles at the back of the field.
I mosey through an alley of green thinking
of Cary Grant in North by Northwest. In the
thistles, I kneel, listening to the woodpeckers.
The ghost deer are still here.
Maybe we were asleep that cool night
Maybe we dreamed of the ghost deer.
But I remember them now as
I experienced them then.
As a memory, that quiet, moving out into
our presence-- As if I recognized them then
the way I still see them now.

07/19/2009