Defiant

The deer’s discarded antler

On the forest floor.

A relic. Outgrown,

Half-covered with leaf stems and pine needles.

 

Farther on,

Three of them lift their heads, no antlers in sight,

Watching my caution.

We stand motionless and look at each other.

A moment on, they go back to grazing,

Unurgent, indifferent.

I belong to the others,

Frequent but irrelevant to their lives,

The facts of their world.

We are here, we are not there,

Not there with them.

We are exiles, outside their berm,

Their tree-walls, their sanctuary.

I am here, now, looking,

In the wild with them but not of them.

I am their wild,

The unknown, the un-explained.

All of us are that:

Often feared, more often ignored,

Their mystery, their trial,

Present at times,

But always inside a greater absence.

 

They live beyond us, in spite of us.

In quiet defiance of us.

I want to be defiant with them.

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