THE COURTSHIP OF WINDS

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.