The seventeenth day of May

Assiniboine Park Zoo, Enclosure #41

In the dark the white-tailed deer
tuck their tails under the long lines
of haunch and hip of shadow
and roadside sound
and settle out in the open
while the American bison as boxy as bales
of straw intact bales of hay broken
sleep at the edge of the chain-link
barbed-wire enclosure
but it is the charge
of the camera on the far post
and the headlights of a car coasting up
the service road that hurries us
to the other side
where wild white-tails kneel in grassy beds
between birch bur oak
and the bedside posts
hung with emblems
of leaping
deer
and cracks are filled in with tar
and the treads of suburban cars
where there is the passing thump
of stereos
and the whites of eyes
scanning the far distance
the curving line
of road

In the dark of the long bike lane
between the tilled land of the Tuxedo golf course
and the thin-trunked trees
of the forest
we are susceptible to the long thrill
of frog-song and star-light the sky
intact the sky broken open
but it is the sudden thrash
of limbs
in the dark
and the stuttering clutch of our throats
as a flock of roosting birds
startle out of sleep
into the wet ditch
and away
that makes us trade the return trip through the trees
for the lit edge of the forest
where the pulled curls
of nightcrawlers
on the smooth sidewalk
only
mimic
the curving line of dark