End
The Doe
by C.K. Williams
Near dusk, near a path, near a brook,
we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay
for the suffering of someone I loved,
the doe in her always incipient terror.
All that moved was her pivoting ear
the reddening sun shining through
transformed to a color I'd only seen
in a photo of a new child in a womb.
Nothing else stirred, not a leaf,
not the air, but she startled and bolted
away from me into the crackling brush.
The part of my pain which sometimes
releases me from it fled with her, the rest,
in the rake of the late light, stayed.
