Last night, it was still light when I got home after work for the first time this year.

As I carried my shopping bags around the edge of the house to my little front door, I startled three deer feeding on the expanse of grass near the moat.

They paused and looked right at me. I looked back. I said hello and told them they were beautiful. And then – all at once – they leapt lightly into the air and bounded off, spring spring spring. The white fur on their rumps was heart-shaped, and I followed it with my eyes into the depths of the woods. Then I could follow them no further.

Spring. Spring. Spring.

*

Looking, Walking, Being

“The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in.”
Mark Rudman

I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.
The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.
And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That’s
a way of breathing.
breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.

Denise Levertov