Lake Christopher has taken the whisper moon hostage
swallowed the smudge clouds to the west, held them
on its unrippled surface, broken only by emerging Hexagenia.
If I brave the spiders to lean over the dock’s edge,
the water could capture my face, draw me to
its depths of crayfish and snapping turtles.
Earlier this week I watched a farmer
collect and cart away stones forced by frost
from the depths to the surface of the tilled cornfield.
This week, I peered into yellow funnel-beaks
of nested robins, watched a sparrow glean
in the library garden. And then I met a little doe
on a morning-lit trail. We faced each other.
She tasted my scent with her tongue,
rolled her dished ears forward to hear my heart,
stamped the ferns, trying to figure out what I am.
Deborah Dickerson
Deborah Dickerson is a guardian ad litem (child advocate) for the Vermont judiciary.