You came for me
curled up against my down-stairs window,
waiting for the morning sun to warm your tattered coat.
Through snow spattered basement glass,
I spy old scars
on the fur of your slender legs
folded up beneath you
Graceful as a nesting swan
Your threadbare pelt like a carpet
worn through.
When I came to your side, you were too weak
to rise from your bed of snow
and sun
blanketing the sleeping irises which will bloom this spring
without you.
“You don’t usually see deer come and lay down next to a home like this,” the young policeman said, before he ended your suffering with a muffled shot-
dragged you by your hind leg into the wetlands from whence you came.
I grieved for your suffering and death.
But you should have died in the frozen thicket beyond our running creek
like all wide animals.
But you wandered beneath a moon lit night
to our home
leaned against my outside wall as I dreamt my winter dreams.
What strange instinct brought you so close?
You could have spared me the tears
from becoming a witness to your death
And to my own.
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