Exchange

I cough into the night & a deer snorts in alarm. I am hungry & dangerous; small bones & bits of muscle get stuck in my throat. My feline love of comfort may dull my instincts, but I still read fear as a form of praise. And I want to tell the deer: I am the animal who rid these hills of your original killers. Shall we resent each other’s part in the conquest? We share almost the pact between a pastoralist & his herd. The tamed woods are as easy to walk through as a pasture now; few thickets remain where a big cat could lie in ambush. But a summer night still teems with things that rasp & tick, other things that flash at eye-level & in between, the dark milk of stars.