Then I crouch to sit cross-legged on an overturned coin jar
that is this river bank.

Two Chickenhawks in the hemisphere twenty feet above
script hemlock and oak by squall
while the creek looks sleazy in afternoon tan.

I carve my fingers into eyelashes of sand,
wet from the rain I watched last night in the bath of the streetlamp
while smoking again,
dormitories laid
like enormous sleeping cats.

At about this point the doe I glimpsed earlier —
fur ribboned with pollen, eyes charcoal dark

— extends her head out behind a maple
like an alcoholic arriving last to AA,
ducking in by the heater
then darting out before the end.

She pivots and turns,
then I see —
back leg broken slightly.

I want to reach for her!
And feed her carrots like bullets into the mouth of a gun —
just to never see this again.

The bruised realization walks
backwards in my mind.

She limps into a graffiti of brambles.