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.

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