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Nancy Devine
The Unknown Known
The top of the hill lends us its vertigo,
or the deer have come out of the trees
to watch us along this path.
But the deer really have come out of the trees;
that is they stepped out of their trunks' cores
and moved through the bark
as though it were a flimsy scrim.
The trees have birthed the deer
and then sealed themselves shut
so no one will know.
Better to have us look at a head of foliage
than the center where things have come to be.
But the hooves are hard like wood,
the whitetails seed pods or buds.
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