Judy Kaber

Feast

Last week I saw a doe standing
still and staring at me in the middle

of the road. Young, I thought, or
she would have known the risk,

understood the danger of hard
black tar, of looking too long into

the face behind the glass. She stayed
until I inched my car forward and, even

then, she stepped slowly, pausing
at the edge, considering me, over

her sun-burnished shoulder. I parked,
crossed the tar, as she walked

among the poplar and budded shrubs.
Foolish. The word rippled through

my head like a stream. I pushed
between the bushes, my feet sinking

in mud-dead leaves, crossing slivers of
crystalized snow. The doe was gone,

but I continued, slapping aside
branches, easing past fallen lichen-

covered trunks. Moving. Moving
through dappled sun, moving through

the sting of birdsong. Hungry, stomach
rumbling. While on my lips, the taste

of spring, pungent, sweet.

Back to Issue XIV…

Lynne Ellis writes in pen. Their words appear in Poetry Northwest, The Seventh Wave, the North American Review, the Missouri Review, Bracken, and many other beloved journals and anthologies. Winner of the Washburn Prize, the Perkoff Prize, and the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she believes every poem is a collaboration. Read their digital chapbook, "Future Sketchbook," online at Harbor Review. Ellis holds a Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington, serves as a poetry reader at Crab Creek Review, and is Publishing Editor of Tulipwood Books, a developmental-editing press. She wants to work with you.