the supple deer

.

.

The quiet opening

between fence strands

perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves,

four feet off the ground,

the deer poured through.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don't know how a stag turns

into a stream, an arc of water.

I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer:

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

to be published this summer

.