Suburban Deer

Suburban deer are small to begin with and they fold themselves origami-wise, all willow stick legs, all so very long necks these delicate white-tail, to appear most undeer-like, puzzles of joints and tucks smaller yet, under the low branches in the way backyard evergreen shrubbery, the low Gold Mop False Cypress and the Japanese Holly, to daytime drowse in the backyards of the houses without fences, houses without children, without dogs, eyes closed or closing or barely open resting until the night, despite whatever the people hour may say, it is the season who tells the sun when to leave and bring the blue flicker shadow glow to the people’s windows, They unfold themselves, then, the suburban deer, unpuzzle themselves back to white-tail and will graze until the hour before dawn, the people’s clock’s hours irrelevant whatever the season, on tulips and azalea and every vegetable and peony and all the prize-winning roses and fruit trees thinking all the while, slow chewing, ears rotating to catch even the smallest of small suburban sounds the suburban deer eat the ornamental and exotic and think, “We were here first. We were always here first.”