Fawn Poem by Lisa Russ Spaar

Defiled stile of knuckled vertebrae
lanced by stinging nettle,
oblivious lantana, exquisite cleft

of hooves still thatched
with matted, beetled tracts
that fall apart as I shovel

rain-vexed ruins to the garden's edge:
what panicked gauntlet
caught and felled you here?

What winter ravening?
My throat is blue
with moving you.

Is suffering only brief as longing?
In your crushed
and rotted wake,

I see the body's inclination:
feast, scatter, crawl away.
Beneath the shade,

I rest my heart,
spade that cannot state its secret,
only lift it -