The birth of a season

© harrington

Goslings, protected by geese and ganders, are walking (waddling) roadsides (photos soon). In woods away from roadsides, whitetail deer fawns are fast finding their feet for a lifetime of fleeing. Hummingbirds are at the feeder. This is a magical time between the start of meteorological and astrological Summer. I remember, years ago, when my children were just that, reading to them from Spring is a New Beginning. There seem to be few poems about fawns that fit this late Spring, early Summer season of birth. One of the better ones I've found is by Edna St. Vincent Millet. Try this:

The Fawn

There it was I saw what I shall never forget
And never retrieve.
Monstrous and beautiful to human eyes, hard to
believe,
He lay, yet there he lay,
Asleep on the moss, his head on his polished cleft
small ebony hoves,
The child of the doe, the dappled child of the deer.

Surely his mother had never said, "Lie here
Till I return," so spotty and plain to see
On the green moss lay he.
His eyes had opened; he considered me.

I would have given more than I care to say
To thrifty ears, might I have had him for my friend
One moment only of that forest day:

Might I have had the acceptance, not the love
Of those clear eyes;
Might I have been for him in the bough above
Or the root beneath his forest bed,
A part of the forest, seen without surprise.

Was it alarm, or was it the wind of my fear lest he
depart
That jerked him to his jointy knees,
And sent him crashing off, leaping and stumbling
On his new legs, between the stems of the white
trees?

In My Minnesota, Summer is often too short and winter too often too, too long. Paraphrasing an old acquaintance of mine, "make it be a good season, whether it wants to or not." Thanks for stopping by. Rants, raves, and reflections served here daily. (Poetry served frequently.)