This Survival
The tracks out back
lead across the snow
from the treeline.
We put the dog’s
breakfast next
to the glass door
because she likes
to gaze and think
while she chews slowly.
So do I for that matter.
Her ears perk at something
I cannot hear outside.
Maybe an animal
in the woods
engaged in the everyday
tasks of survival.
I strain to see
anything in that shade.
This Morning, the Sky Is Yellow
The deer is at the treeline
this morning,
watching the house
but still uncommitted
to crossing
the snowy field.
When I open
the back door,
she’s gone to whatever
the place of safety
is in her world.
For me, for now, this is safe,
half in and out
of the house
looking up to the dawn sky.
Where the Bog Will Be
Last night, we saw
the whitetail
disappear into the treeline,
and this morning
I wake thinking of her
in the snow
picking her way
through the woods
foraging whatever
there is to eat,
she in competition
with her lover and offspring
for brown shoots
in a hollow
that will be a bog
in a couple of months.
My dog watches
the place where she went
into the forest,
worried I think
about life outside.
John Brantingham was
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been
featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including his latest, Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press).
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