Deerwalking

Once, with a mother’s vision, I could hear

the squeak of cell division through the night air

the humming of a tiny ribcage

wrapped in milky darkness.

Later, the crash and plunder of a teenage sulk landing,

a meteor in the porch. With no advance warning

Silence thundered through these rooms. Fragments

of their smiles chased each other

like shrapnel,

lodging in all the crooked spaces.

Time heaped up against the doors,

blocked the chimney till it smoked, obscured the glass

thicket of blown fuses, kicked over the traces of corroding studs

self-seeded

in forests of abandoned football boots.

Tonight, for the first time, outside

the rise and fall of my own breath,

I hear a nightingale on the Common.

Slippered, in my nightdress

I steal out and see a shadow

in the hazel scrub, standing motionless.

I know you. I remember.

Once, I saw you gaze helpless through deadwood

as your fawn, pursued by dogs tore

screaming through a chaos of bluebells; and

later, felt your brown eyes watch me

gather up those little cloven hooves like sticks

in Marks and Spencer fleece and carry him away.

Braver now, I cross the ripe belly of moss on tiptoe.

The doe follows; she presses her soft ear

to my thigh

and I can feel the earthlight flow through soles as thin

as deerskin.

Weightless, she sidesteps hawthorn hurdles,

guides me over fissures deep as oceans, past the boulders crouching

in the moonlight’s shimmer.

I know you.

I rub the tufts of hair

in place of velvet nubs, and stroke

the soft white curl beneath her chin and feel

the hum of kinship pulse beneath my fingertips.

She unfurls her tongue

to lick the corners of her eyes, and sighs.

Like me, she knows how the lightness of nothing

draws down the curtain of the night.