When we lived in West Virginia I spent a lot of time walking with my new baby in a sling through the woods. She'd sleep, her little baby head against me, causing a patch of sweat between us. It was wonderful, the smell of the woods and her baby scent all together. It's part of what I miss most about that place, the smell of the wood and the sound of the leaves and the creek and the animals.
Often I encountered deer on these walks. Deer and diamondbacks.
So this poem speaks to me.
The Doe
by CK Williams
Near dusk, near a path, near a brook,
we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay
for the suffering of someone I loved,
the doe in her always incipient alarm.
All that moved was her pivoting ear
the reddening sun shining through
transformed to a color I'd only seen
in a photo of a child in a womb.
Nothing else stirred, not a leaf,
not the air, but she startled and bolted
away from me into the crackling brush.
The part of my pain which sometimes
releases me from it fled with her, the rest,
in the rake of the late light, stayed.