THIS MORNING I WATCHED THE DEER (8.23.06)

This Morning I Watched the Deer
By Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early (2004)

This morning I watched the deer
with beautiful lips touching the tips
of the cranberries, setting their hooves down
in the dampness carelessly, isn’t it after all
the carpet of their house, their home, whose roof
is the sky?
Why, then, was I suddenly miserable?

Well, this is nothing much.
This is the heaviness of the body watching the swallows
gliding just under that roof.

This is the wish that the deer would not lift their heads
and leap away, leaving me there alone.
This is the wish to touch their faces, their brown wrists—
to sing some sparkling poem into
the folds of their ears,

then walk with them,
over the hills
and over the hills

and into the impossible trees.


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