by Garrett Scott
I mounted deer-whistles onto the van. Next door
two women spend bright mornings dozing hip to hip in a hammock.
Even in this crisp light one has hair dark as that wine stain
we left to soak from the linen runner when we went to bed.
She swings her legs out from the hammock: they flash
white like the flanks of deer. On my drives, as advertised,
the deer slip from the road's shoulders into the woods.
Your absence has this kind of radius. The whistle's pitch
stretches behind me: no doubt the Doppler produces
an audible bite, like pebbles kicked up from the blacktop.
Unseen deer shake their heads like dazed boxers. They emerge
to browse on foxglove, chamomile, burrs and weeds.
Garrett Scott is the manager of The Brick Row Book Shop in San Francisco and
an M.F.A. candidate at San Francisco State. This is his first time in print.
E-mail: garrett_scott@compuserve.com
