Snowfall angled and heavy against the road

drives relentlessly in the fields along the house,

piling up all around Winter’s contours, paths.

The deer have returned in the storm, searching

fields for food, tender shoots just beneath the surface

in hardened earth, snouts damp with seeking.

Is it the wanting that makes them return to the cold earth?

These several deer gathered here, doing deer things,

animals, instinctive, certain their hunger is what’s real,

truth in this moment now, the present, a gift.

What is it that coaxes shoots from their slumber come Spring?

A quickening faith perhaps, suggests survival

is possible, even likely, might just lead their green crowns

to burst against the ground’s frosted underbelly.

More likely, deer move on, rummaging, pressing on toward Summer

storm’s edge, where foraging makes for easier work, the answers

we often look for under every Fall leaf, each stone, every fresh

green blade of grass, in the glitter of a perfect snowflake.