Fawn Road

The season of butterflies has past,
when I would screech in secret joy
at the way they’d thrash against
the windshield, and in my mind
I’d clap my hands, sweet lord!,
having made contact, before
they’d lift off like nothing else
because nothing is so light,

not the bright white bones
of deer, dressed in tawny skins
that start to creep away from
gravel burns, leaving a mottled
magenta mess—
                               but today
there was a fawn, as much like
delicate patterned wings
as anything ever was,
with her—her?—white

spots, like lacey, red-inked,
toppled dominoes stamped
against her sides, and I didn’t
imagine the way her slender
leg would snap or go dust
beneath my wheels,
rather I imagined the way
she must have smelled
and how honored I should
have been to smell her,

had the traffic not been so fast,
I’d have taught my children
about the smell of new deer
to does, and I’d have photographed
her tiny hip, white as her marks,
just begun to poke from her
sweet rotting flank, or her
black nose and lips turned up, oh!,  
toward her first visage of monarch,
the last of the season.