Standing still in woods alone,

long limbs shake and ears prick

hearing hoofbeats just beyond the woods.

A partial alarm is waiting

Heart pounding and quietly quaking

watching the man admiring the snow.

I turn and sprint to life, fleeting like wind,

dark against black, against Robert Frost’s

‘the deepest night’,

a lone deer flying deeper into the wood,

the wood still, and silently, filling with snow.