Richard K. Kent

Fawn at the Cemetery

 

 

We’d gone to the little cemetery amid pines

in search of names linked to familiar haunts

known since childhood, the lichened lettering

on the old graves still mostly legible.

But that summer afternoon lives

in my mind because of the fawn.

 

Hidden, it was lying perfectly still

behind one of the larger, upright stones.

As I stepped nearer, it burst up

from behind the slab, hastening in flight

on wobbly legs, the white spots on its tawny body

the last trace to disappear into the cloaking forest.

For one blink of a moment, that sleeping graveyard

awakened in a flash of wiry life.

 

 

 

(Published in Pinyon Review, No. 16, October 2019)

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