This circle of breath...

 




 


SEVEN DEER WHILE THE SUN IS SETTING

There is nothing in the world so still
as those deer, half hidden in the grass,
their legs bent like old cornstalks
beneath them on the hill.

They are undisturbed by the weather,
its daylong withholding of light,
the sky that fell and fell across the hills --
the wind its only tether.

In wet grass, in this beginning light,
in the echo of the door I shut too hard
they are motionless and tame.
It does not matter to them that you are not here tonight.

They stare straight toward the western oceans,
this family, this circle of breath, and nothing,
nothing alarms them, not the fierce gold emergence of an
angel, as the long blue horizon opens.

Copyright Ginny Eliason, 1985.  Used by permission.  






 Also by my dear friend Ginny:

 
Letters from Heaven: An Illuminated Alphabet