The Deer House by Sara Michas-Martin

An antler taps the glass before the sun comes on
this is how I’ll know it’s November
the deer fog-browsing for something more
a window’s drip a ditch pursing water
I carry myself ungently
from place to place I almost
step on a deer near my car
curled like a comma
between two parts of a sentence
I can’t write
I feel the largeness
of the animal’s calm breathing
before the hard left turns of surprise
its mass contrary to loft upon going
43 years I’ve searched consciously or not
for an advisor in other people
for how to live stay kind make things mother
the doe grazing at dusk doesn’t know
the size of my impatience
only her fawn nosing for milk
this early departure of light
her path traces boundary
also a passage through

Sara Michas-Martin is the author of Gray Matter, winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize and nominated for the Colorado Book Award. Recent poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review Online, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Stanford.