The fawn was
born beneath the hydrangea I had mistaken,
[.poemindent] for a year, as a young oak.[.poemindent]

I squatted there. No
fear. It lay alone
[.poemindent] in the leaves, and at my near touch a tuft[.poemindent]

of its skin (you couldn’t
call it
[.poemindent] hide, barely fur, still birth-[.poemindent]

smeared in smatters
of pale gray spots) –
[.poemindent] one tuft of skin quivered, as[.poemindent]

though cold.
Even this first day
[.poemindent] the doe had gone to find herself[.poemindent]

something to eat
in a better yard. Error on
error, a life amasses.

Do you believe
the old poet – not
[.poemindent] to be born is reckoned best[.poemindent]

of all?
So let’s ask
[.poemindent] the bird dog gagging at his chain[.poemindent]

two yards over, bloody with boredom.
Ask the night-
[.poemindent] black vultures, kettling[.poemindent]

over the neighbor’s burn pile.
I had somewhere
[.poemindent] to go. I don’t know where, but[.poemindent]

how could it
matter, so much, to go?
[.poemindent] Smell of snow an hour[.poemindent]

before it falls,
then doesn’t. Soft leather
[.poemindent] nose of the fawn, wet in my palm[.poemindent]

where it nestled its warm
jaw in. To make
[.poemindent] a cathedral (I should have stayed) of such things…[.poemindent]

[.smalltext] reprinted from Scavenger Loop: Poems by David Baker, copyright © 2015 David Baker, with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Image from www.watercolourflorals.blogspot.com[.smalltext]