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Sophie and Ben Grab Lunch

Florence Sage
They were deer,
a delicate doe and a sturdy moss-horned buck,
both young and feeding
off the overgrown plants in my untended yard.
Let them have all they want, salad bar.

She less trusting, paced the grass to and fro
with her long reaching gait,
head jutting and receding with each step,
she paused often to check around, falling still as if posed,
then re-entered movement, a natural dancer.

Her slim face turned to mine at the upstairs window

at some small sound or move that caught her attention
to return my gaze until I shifted to another window
behind a gauze curtain to release her eyes
while the buck pulled vines off the fence and chewed.

You could tell he loved her,
the way he nosed along her back.

Neither sniffed for my dog, not as he would

later sniff for them when I let him out, the joy,

a Basset snuffling back and forth across the grass,
Oh Mom, the deer were here, were here!
Maybe he’ll roll in their dung, or eat it,
and I’ll have to clean him up.

I wanted them to stay.
Stay to munch more foliage from my overrun yard.
If they weren’t so skittish I’d hire them, like goats.
Stay to allow me more of them, alive
in their light brown pelts and their dark deer eyes.
I wanted to name them: Sophie and Ben.

But views differ on the subject of urban deer.
Bitter plants are recommended and foul sprays,

six-foot fences, spinners and staring garden gnomes.
The Doodle next door objected from his yard
with his piercing bark, bark and bark.

Prey animals taking no chance with the neighbors’ fence
and a canine full of himself and his voice,
they bounded off, Sophie and Ben,
while I was in the shower

since you can’t really gaze all day,
said the clock and the beep from my laptop,
or graze a green yard in peace.

Not even if
a grateful woman pauses in her day to give you a name
and a storyline she finds appealing.
The Salal Review is published annually by the students of Lower Columbia College enrolled in Arts Magazine Publication. Copyright @2020 and @2021 The Salal Review and the individual contributors. No portion of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the express permission of the individual contributor.
 
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