Deer

The deer, I don't know
as they wander in creation
and sleep without walls
and have children with big eyes
and nuzzling noses that rub
against their mothers,
do they tell stories?
Do they remember the dead
and the lost and the found?
Do they stand in an empty field
at the close of day
and know that
love is moving its quiet hand
even around the ears pricking
at the sound of cars, gunshots,
or the silence of night when
the fawns have been lost?
They do, I think
though they have no pen.
They whisper on the wind
about the life of bones,
a rhyme not here
when there were only stones.