There will come a day when the deer trails will be my trails, until they will not be anymore
by Jaden Fong
There will come a day when the deer trails will be my trails.
And on this day, I will sink my shoes into the dried tar
with bits of rubber sticking to the cracked asphalt like flesh
to the mangled teeth of a starved coyote. The next day
will be filled with electricity--thunder jolting through my ears,
and lightning traveling through the phantom limbs of great oaks,
tingling its boughs with static burn. My children will tell tales
of a single deer that escaped: a speck of debris on the record,
able to be blown away by a stray exhale. They will wonder if
a fawn might wander into an overgrown, pastoral kitchen:
whether its twig legs will stumble over a fallen, moss topped door,
or if its hooves will be plastered in the powder of primeval tile. They will
ask me if I think that a buck might ram its antlers into the glass
of an old Sedan, its breaking crash a crowing of triumph, to which
I will respond that I secretly hope that one of us might be caught
in their headlights, the blush in our eyes extinguished as a branch
peeks through our ribcage. I will tell them that while today the imprints
from our steps etch themselves into the land beneath us, there will
come a day when a pair of hooves will clear the dusty slate one final time.
This poem originally appeared in The Owl.