Three Poems by John Brantingham

 

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).